


Always Ask Why (revised)

by AlexiaMorana



Category: Watchmen (2009), Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mental Instability, Minor Violence, Original Character Death(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, POV Original Character, Rewrite, Sex, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 11:02:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 55,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20406652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaMorana/pseuds/AlexiaMorana
Summary: 1963 - An NYC schoolteacher sustains a relationship with Walter Kovacs until the emergence of Rorschach years later.Originally published on ff.net in 2009, this is the revised and updated version of my fic with additional material I've been working on over the past few years, incl a chapter I completely replaced. I felt like this story was due a heavy review and rework of certain scenes.





	1. A Favor, 1963

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Always Ask Why](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/513262) by Me! Alexiamorana. 

**1963**

After several months of back and forth, long hours at the school, long hours in the shop, I could not push the image of his face or the sound of his voice from my head. I thought I was going crazy; I would try to drown my thoughts with loud music from my record player and with images from the nightly news but they always came back: the deep raspy voice which may have been from too much smoking and the flashing red hair which was rare around here. He was easy to pick out on the streets, even in crowds. His demeanor made him stand out the most, even as he tried to hide himself from the world.

He was the only tailor I ever opened my wallet for. We barely exchanged more than a simple greeting with each visit. He may not have been very good and there were about 40 others I could go to around the city without even searching. He wasn’t even the closest to me. I had to take the subway up four stops when I could have simply walked two blocks to the dry-cleaners who rented out his back space to Linda’s Alterations on weekends. So why was I still going? I was a loyal customer and he intrigued me. I was witness to his mistakes more than once and to his boss admonishing him but never did I say a word. He took it in silence, a thin grimace across his face whenever he was criticized. Through an array of visitors, typically lower-middle-class workers, I observed that he was marginally uncomfortable working with women's clothing, as if he tried to hide it from witnesses, perhaps even from himself. His hands clenched the fabric tighter, a slight shake at the wrist, buttons between the tips of fingers. Luckily for him, most of the pieces I delivered weren’t even mine. My students were poor and their parents never seemed to care about their ragged appearances. Every couple weeks I would take what had been brought to me at the school and then I would make the trip to see Kovacs. I’d stay and read a book as he worked, rarely exchanging a word with the man as I looked up to watch his fingers move deftly under the sewing machines, grabbing pins, and a yellow tape measure always around his neck that he would whip off and back on in a snap.

Today I came with another trash bag full of denim that should really just be tossed. For the amount of money I spent at the tailor’s, I could practically buy the kids a whole new wardrobe. Some of their parents would contribute a few cents to my campaign while others never said a word; perhaps they felt I owed them, perhaps they simply couldn’t afford it. I had made it very clear at the beginning of my position at the school this would be coming out of my own pocket. This is the least I could do for the children in our district and had continued through the summer break.

“Hi, Walter,” I greeted him with a heavy sigh. He wouldn’t say hello. He was not fond of small talk. We were used to ignoring each other. It was five pm and I already knew I would be here until he closed at nine, half-finished with the job.

He nodded and took the bag from my hands as I entered. It was getting chilly out and had begun to rain an hour ago. I stood for a moment as he headed to the back of the shop.

“Walter – I’m sorry - Mr. Kovacs - can I buy you some coffee?”

“There’s a pot back here.” _ The sky is blue. Pavement is black. _

“It’s empty.”

His eyes flashed over to the dirty coffee pot that was indeed completely empty, then back to me. He returned to the front counter and gave me a slight shrug without looking up from threading the needle in his hand.

I smiled weakly and left. I always feared that any overtly friendly behavior would be too strong for him; he simply wasn’t the approachable type. I had quickly learned to temper my behavior and voice when interacting with him. Ten minutes later, I returned with two tall black coffees and some sugars in my pocket. I placed one down on the table that held the coffeepot and other assorted appliances. _ He practically lives here_. He didn’t thank me upon my return but I asked if he took anything in the coffee.

“Black is fine,” he said with a stare for me to sit back down.

I nodded and went back to sit in the chair by the front door. The draft was chilling and I wondered if I could do anything to plug it. Unfortunately, the entire building should be demolished. Rent must have been cheap. It was decades old and the track lighting flickered every once in a while. I pulled out a book from my bag - a new Phillip K. Dick - flipped halfway through to a dog-eared page, and sat in silence for the next two hours.

I heard him sip his coffee close to closing. It was certainly cold by now. Finally, he sat back in the metal folding chair to witness his completion. He wasn’t admiring what he had done; there was no sense of pride in his features.

The lighting traced the shadows on his already deeply drawn and tired face. He scratched at his stubble before sighing and looked over at me, probably wondering why this gnat hadn’t crawled back to her own corner, away from this place.

I stood, slipping my book back into my bag, and asked if he finished them all.

A nod was his reply. He stood to fold them all up. I went over and placed a light hand to his arm to stop. I immediately regretted this action as a grimace flashed across his lips and I snapped back my hand.

“You don’t have to. I will. Take a break,” I said.

“It’s my job.”

“And I’m not going to tell on you if you don’t do something.” I hoped that my small smiles and reassuring tone would have an effect. He looked at me and I was finally able to really see into his eyes; there was something back there and my heart knotted. The next moment he brushed past me and found a half-empty spray bottle to wipe the windows down before he closed.

I folded everything to place back in the bag. They would get shuffled up anyway so I wasn’t too meticulous, but I admired his patchwork and seams. He was getting better. As I finished packing, he stood behind the front counter to close out the register. I shuffled through my pocket to pull out my wallet, finding a couple dollars to hand over.

“Can I buy you dinner?” My sudden inquiry surprised us both; I needed to steer this back. “If you don’t want to-”

“I don’t.”

“Okay. I just, I come here so much with the same things. Maybe next time you’ll change your mind.” I then realized I was nervous, talking to him like that, rambling. It was embarrassing.

“I doubt it.” He ripped me a receipt and came around the counter to shut the door tight behind me as I left. I looked back once, mentally slapping myself with my bag between my arms, to see his shadowed form retreat into the rear of the shop.


	2. Fine Dining, Late '63

Two days later I brought another shipment around eight pm and he asked me why I kept doing this. By ‘this’, he probably meant: _ Why do you keep bothering me? _ But for the sake of the conversation I took it as, _ Why do you keep bringing me work? _

I asked him why he was still a tailor. He said it was a job but that’s not the same as bringing in clothes for kids.

“Do you like teaching?” he asked.

“Not what I thought it would be.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because I have to. Because this makes them feel better about themselves. They’re in elementary school and what do they see on TV every day? The world is not in a good place. This is materialism, but to them, it means something. I can at least try.”

I had less than ten items today for him to work on and left to buy him twenty-cent coffee again. This time he actually stopped his work to drink it and nodded a covert thank you at his station. I sat on the chair at the front of the store, witnessing patrons come in and retrieve their things. Neither party said a word besides requesting and giving names. Money was exchanged and Walter was left to be interrupted numerous times tonight before he finished. It was past closing and he asked me to lock the front door. It had begun to rain again; a light drizzle stained the sidewalks. Even something that would ordinarily be beautiful found no solace against a dreary background.

He announced his completion and I again insisted that I could pack them up, folding them into my large shoulder bag.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow before answering. “Fifth stop.”

I nodded. After a long pause, I inhaled and said, “That’s convenient then. I’m the fourth. Will you let me buy you dinner this time?”

He gave me a long hard stare - it would have been a glare if he wasn’t so tired and fed up - and finally agreed reluctantly. We took the subway to my stop and he shuffled a couple paces behind me the entire way to my front door. I had to look back a couple times to ensure he hadn’t slipped into the shadows to escape.

With one hand I held the bag tightly to my chest, the other digging for my keys. My fingers were shaking. It wasn’t _that _cold. I finally opened the door and bade him follow me inside with a nod of my head.

I flicked on the kitchen light, plopped the bag on a chair, and turned back to him. He stood, hands shoved deep in coat pockets, eyes flickering around the room before he decided to sit on the stairs.

“I will be right back,” I said. “Um, is there anything in particular you’d like?”

He shrugged, adjusting his posture. “Surprise me,” he muttered.

“Alright,” I said. I hadn’t even realized I was nervously fumbling with my keys again until I dropped them on the floor. I squatted to scoop them up, his eyes following the up and down.

“Don’t go anywhere,” I said, and then left to find us sustenance, praying to the city itself that he wouldn’t leave.

* * *

I returned to find that he hadn’t moved from my stairwell. He was uncomfortable and I found the entire night to be incredibly awkward - my own damn fault -, but I managed to get a few words out of him about his life. I learned that he had been a tailor for about seven years and found little joy in what he did. He was there because it was something to do, best he could manage. When I asked if there was anything he did want to do, he shook his head and was again silent as he continued to eat. I offered him a glass of water and he downed it before I even touched mine. _ Thirsty_. I offered him a refill but he refused.

“It's just water.”

He said nothing, so I filled his glass again from the tap, setting it down next to his bowl.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked again, reaching his hand out to curl his fingers around the base of the glass.

"Treating you to a cheap meal of rice and pork?" I shrugged and sighed. But honestly, I didn’t know. A combination of loneliness and curiosity, perhaps. I had been attracted to him for some time. Maybe it was his eyes. Maybe it was the small scar across his cheek. It was everything he wasn’t saying. But I felt that I had to come up with something, so I asked him a question.

“Do you have any friends, Walter?”

“Only if you consider my boss.” To whose back Walter has sneered at more than once and it made me chuckle every time I caught him doing it.

“Did you ever?”

“If you want to count the kids I almost killed when I was ten.” Bingo. That was the fire in his stare – old hatred that had never gone out.

He said this to scare me, and his eyes widened slightly as I continued to speak without asking about those he beat up at so young an age. I knew I should be scared but honestly, I’ve seen worse in my classroom. I’ve seen worse on the streets.

“What do you think I want from you?” I asked.

No delay. “A lay.”

I laughed, nearly choking on a bean sprout. He was serious! “No! God, if I wanted that, I’d be out there with the streetwalkers down a couple blocks. I took a chance talking to you, but you’re obviously not insane. I’m glad you agreed.”

He may not have felt like he had much of a choice. I had been a bit pushy, and I regretted it. I barely knew this man and yet had acted like a schoolgirl who wanted to sit with her crush at the lunch table.

There’s no way I could feel something like that towards this man already, could I?

He didn’t say anything else for a few moments, gulping down his glass. Denying himself the last swallow, he stood up and donned his coat from the hallway without looking at me.

“Thanks for dinner,” he mumbled and let himself out before I even had a chance to object.

* * *

The next time we saw each other was the following week, which was the first time I saw Walter outside the shop since we started talking. Well, talking was a strong word. Exchanging phrases, perhaps. Nothing more than what could easily fit on a scrap of paper tucked in a schoolbook. 

I was rushing to school from where I had gone for lunch that day, not having any extra money on me for a subway ticket when he passed me on the sidewalk. I hadn't even noticed until moments later when something clicked in my head and I threw back a glance to watch him enter the bakery, wondering if I should follow him in.

“No..."

I was stuck at the next intersection for at least five minutes, wondering why protesters _had _to appear at the most inconvenient times. I didn't know what they were preparing to riot about; I didn't look at their signs nor did I care to find out. Classes were starting in about ten minutes and if I wasn’t there in time, there was never any stopping the students from overturning desks or running out of the building completely. As I sighed and stood, noticing that the closest station was closed for renovations which actually meant that someone had been murdered, I was struck by a wave of dizziness. Exhaustion. The weather. Dehydration. The screaming of tens of people about my age frustrated with their jobs and the way of the world.

"Fuck. These. People," I hissed under my breath. This was the moment when I stopped caring completely. So I would be late. So there might be a little chaos in the classroom. I'd smack them back into shape.

I imagined all the people before me being run over by a postal truck, letters and packages flying everywhere as it overturned into the sidewalk. Someone’s blood would splash into my face, a box slash my leg, and all I would do was laugh.

“Follow me,” came a gravelly voice in my ear, shocking me from my daydream. The tailor, brown bag of baked goods in hand, shoved past me, creating a temporary pathway as I followed close behind. I had to duck under signs and flailing arms. Whatever was going on right now was not anything I was interested in. Finally breaking free to the opposite curb, we kept walking. I figured that he had taken the next stop down and by the time I reached the school, I was ten minutes late. Turning to huff a goodbye, he shoved a bagel at my chest which I took with fumbling fingers.

“They always give one extra.”

“Thanks,” I said. He turned and strode away, leaving me in a cloud of disbelief and surprise. All because of this bagel.


	3. It Begins, Late '63

As the weeks passed and blurred together through the fall semester, I managed to convince him to share more meals with me. It took a fair amount of coaxing but I didn’t want him to feel that he was optionless. His pay couldn’t have been anything superb given what he charged me so I felt like I owed him. We came to have lunch on weekends and dinner once during the week, even if I had brought nothing that day for him to mend. It took several weeks before we found a routine: I always ordered take-out and we typically had our fine dining experience in the shop where we’d lock the door and hang up the ‘closed’ sign. His general distaste was still evident and it was more obvious than ever that he really didn’t have any friends right now. I’m not sure if I could qualify myself as his friend; he probably saw me more as an intrusive woman but still, he agreed and did not kick me out. Few words were exchanged, but they were not needed at this time. When he did become more comfortable speaking with me, his words softened with the flow of conversation and I was eventually able to learn a fact or two about his profession. 

Working in the shop for hours on end in poor conditions and with even poorer nutrition portrayed him as older than he actually was. This became more noticeable to me as I spent more time with him up close instead of by the front door where shadows blurred his features from the back. He would catch me examining him sometimes and I’d turn back away just as easily as he disregarded me on a daily basis.

He wasn’t even distracted by the fights picked and arrests made within the vicinity of the shop, focused as he was on his work. He was apathetic towards his job and his interactions with people which became increasingly apparent the more I paid attention to his mumblings with customers. Before, I read my books intensely or graded homework as I sat in the chair by the window. Now that I was actually _interested _in him, everything was obvious and I half-assed whatever was in my lap. He muttered to himself in a voice so low I couldn’t hear it above the clicking of the sewing machines unless I focused. Whenever the bell on the door chimed with the in and out of customers he would wait a few seconds before acknowledging the patron, uninterested in their requests but required to care. The only time he ever nodded was at my own entrance, regardless of my purpose.

The first time that I had come without anything in my arms, he asked what the hell I was doing there. ‘I like it here. It’s quiet.’

It was November and the school would be on Christmas break soon enough which would provide me with more time to spend investigating him. Investigating might be a harsher word than what I was going for, but I figured that he may slowly unravel just by being near another human being for several hours out of a day. That or he would suddenly lash out and strike me down like those boys he mentioned, but I doubted it. I was keen on pursuing our friendship slowly, with soft small-talk questions, nothing intrusive. Anything more, he had to come up with tidbits about himself by himself. It was hard and most likely completely impossible for me to get him to open up. And if he didn’t, that would be okay, though I strongly wished for the contrary.

He grew more comfortable as the weeks passed except for an experience one night during a heavy rain. Locking the door and turning the sign an hour early to prevent soaking wet customers and goods, the tailor stood before the door with arms crossed, watching the rain. I looked at him inches away from my chair, wondering what he was really observing - if he stared past the heavy drops to the street and the facing buildings or was he oblivious to everything in his vision. As he turned back around and looked down at me with weary eyes, I suggested that we stay in for a while until it lets up.

“It won’t,” he said, retreating to the back. Despite his distaste of the weather and desire to be anywhere but this shop, he made no move to throw on his coat and instead settled back in his folding chair. I returned my attention to the storm outside.

The rain pelted the buildings and sidewalks in a blinding mist, rapping violently at the front door and windows of the shop like a hungry hobo or suspicious policeman. Water leaked through the roof above the front counter into the old takeout containers that I took from the garbage. The shop was freezing; the heat was off to save money and only the flicker of the lights made the room bearable. He might not have been the most pleasant company, but Walter and I managed to sit through the storm for another hour until we both realized that we really wouldn’t get anywhere tonight unless we bared the outdoors.

“I’ll come with you on the train.” It wasn’t so much an offer as a statement that if we were going in the same direction, then why not?

Pulling the measuring tape from his neck to toss atop a pile of fabric, he put on his coat and hat, ushering me out before locking the door behind him.

Actually, I didn’t mind the rain. And maybe I should have said that I didn’t mind it except that day I felt like I needed his company so I insisted that we try to wait it out. Obviously, the rain was not going to stop and we walked faster than usual towards the nearest station. I grabbed for his arm blindly, finding a fistful of heavy fabric to anchor myself in the downpour. He didn’t look up from the ground as the water pooled along the brim of his hat, falling in sheets in front of his face.

The station had been reopened after the blood from the murder was cleaned up and caution tape yanked down. Descending into the darkness, I cursed and let him go, shaking out as much water as I could from my hair. My schoolbag was soaked through which would make for difficult grading.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I didn’t want to lose you in this.”

_ Announcing trains to hell _as one slowly stopped on heavy breaks and the lingering unfortunate few, including ourselves, trudged into the cars. I sat across the aisle from him noticing that he pulled himself in tighter with crossed legs and hands still deep in pockets.

I was exhausted and ready to sleep but I would not be in my own bed for another extra hour. The tracks needed emergency repairing, everyone screamed and cursed, and I wished they would all shut up. This was the weather that made them more aggravated than usual. Their jobs. Someone was probably fired today. Someone probably found out that his wife cheated on him today. The tailor and I and the collective few who remained sighed on the truth that we were involved in an uncontrollable reality that might fix itself in due time. I don’t know actually how long it took for the train or the tracks to be repaired. Maybe someone was shot again and they didn’t want to tell us. They had to hire someone quick and ferry them down the walkways to make a dramatic leap onto the side of the train.

At one point, I made to sit beside him, asking what he thought was happening.

He grunted, “Does it matter?”

He was right. We would be here regardless.

I must have dozed off briefly because I was nudged awake with a sharp elbow to the ribs.

Oh fuck.

Immediately I shot up from his stiff form, sighed out the anxiety, and shifted myself as far away from him in my seat as possible. But I got up anyway to see if I could see anything down the length of the cars through the connecting doors.

Sure enough as my suspicions had held, someone was dead two cars down. Lying in their own pool of blood and the killer with a shot to the head slumped next to the body. I returned and sat across from Walter again, exchanging a knowing gaze. I leaned against the bar next to me, holding his eyes for a few more seconds before he turned down the brim of his hat to obscure his vision.

The tailor uncrossed his legs and lay down on the dirty seats. I kept looking even as the train began to move again ten minutes later, thinking that I could find answers tonight. When it was my stop, I said goodbye, assured that I would not receive a response.


	4. Late Night Visitors, Late '63

Companies and businesses closed the following day due to continuing inclement weather. I stayed inside to catch up on grading and lesson plans, thankful that it would soon be break and I could be left alone for once. I might send in some requests to the tailors around town for something for the students, but I was going broke. As quiet and reserved as he was without ever complaining to me, I might not want to visit Walter Kovacs for a while. The second voice in my head told me that it was just nervousness or more so that my continued appearances all these times actually were _not _ welcomed and he only dealt with me because he didn’t know what else to do.

I was embarrassed to have fallen asleep against him on the train; he probably hadn’t been that physically close to someone of the opposite sex in a very long time. He had been stiff as a lamppost when I woke. I wondered if he had parents in New York. We hadn’t mentioned anything about families to each other if my memory was correct. Although judging by his hesitant and stiff interactions with myself and the other women who came and went that he was forced to speak to, something must have occurred in a previous life between him and a woman. But who knows. I’m no shrink and I shouldn’t make assumptions.

The clock turned to 10:13 pm and someone knocked on my front door, startling me from my paperwork.

“Who the hell is around at this hour?” I asked myself.

I did what I normally did when people knocked on doors: creep as quietly as I could against a wall along aging floorboards and open the first door into the tiny hallway. Propping it open behind me with a foot, I peered out the tiny peephole slightly above eye level. Dark form, hat. Many men didn't wear hats anymore these days, so my mind immediately screamed, ‘IT'S WALTER. OPEN THE DOOR. NOW.’ A softer voice told me to run my fingers through my hair that hadn't been brushed since yesterday.

“Who is it?” I shouted through the wood.

I barely heard his response, but the tone of his voice was enough evidence for me to unlock and open my apartment to the rain outside, pushing the front door open to grant him entry.

I was acutely aware that I was barefoot without stockings, hoping that he wouldn’t think twice and turn away.

Those worn-out eyes looked up at me from a step down and I immediately bid him enter out of the rain. With hesitant steps in, as if he could not control his own movements, he squeezed past me into the hallway. Wiping his shoes on the throw rug, he took off his hat, thread a hand through his hair, and didn’t move.

“Hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said.

“No. Not at all. Sorry for my appearance. Being stuck inside all day only forced me to catch up on a few things... What, uh – what are you doing here?”

“Passing by. Might have been rude not to say hello.”

I was glad. My voice caught when I responded. “Oh. Okay. Please, come in.” A half-smile before I turned back around to the kitchen table where I had been working. “Let me move some things for you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You need someplace to sit, Walter. Unless you’re okay with the floor,” I said. “I haven’t mopped in weeks,” I added, half-muttering to myself. A reminder to start cleaning up for my new guest.

He shed his coat, tossed it over the back of a chair, and sat down as I shifted papers and notebooks out of the way.

He looked up at me, watching. I could feel his eyes, they made me nervous. “When did you start teaching?” he asked.

I was taken aback by the inquiry and took a moment to find the words to respond. “Oh, right out of college. Actually, just this past spring. I was a long-term sub for a while before they gave me my own classroom.”

“But you don’t like it.”

“It’s not what it’s hyped up to be…. Would you like anything to drink?”

Tongue explored his molars, chapped lips might need moisturizing.

“Water. Or milk.”

“Milk warm or cold?”

“Cold is fine.”

I delivered his request and sat down opposite him, reminiscent of the night not too long ago when he agreed to dinner.

“How was work?” Mental forehead slap. Stupid question.

His eyes agreed. Shrug. “Only there for an hour.”

He didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk, although he never was. I couldn’t think of anything now that _could _get him talking, and it was late. I returned to stare at the work before me and the messy handwriting of my students, aware that he was absently looking around the room, glass in hand.

As I began to scribble corrections again, he set down the glass and motioned to stand.

“You – don’t have to go,” I said, holding a hand up to him. “I’m sorry, I have to get through all of this. But – you can stay. Especially considering this weather. Make the most of the pit stop before going out again.”

Weighing the pros and cons in his head, or maybe just the cons, he sat back down and asked if there was something he could eat. Something small.

“You okay with canned foods? Fruit?”

Another shrug and a nod. “Do you mind?”

“No, no, not at all. Look above the sink.”

A minute later he found a can of peaches, the can opener, and a fork before sitting back down.

“I have bowls.”

“Don’t want to make a mess for you.”

I smiled at this quirk and wrote as he scraped out the fruit slices, metal on metal.

I paused in between math equations and looked up at him. His absent-minded eating was fixating; a tiny bit of juice round its way through his stubble. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand before continuing, ignorant to my eyes.

I laid down my pen and crossed my arms over the paperwork, leaning towards him. “You said you’ve been working for seven years. Which means you dropped out of high school, right? Why?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Never went to a real school. Ever hear of Charlton’s?”

Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children. “Yes. I have one in my class from there.” It might have been insulting to say that the boy was still a ‘Problem Child’ at heart and had served as my only knowledge of the types that they release until now.

“They let me out when I was sixteen. And here I am,” he said, popping another peach in his mouth.

I suddenly recalled a news article from the Gazette. “I heard that Dr. Manhattan made … some fabric…. I don’t know. It was in the paper. Did you ever have the chance to work with it?”

Something flickered on behind his eyes and his features tensed momentarily. “Last year. I made a girl a dress. She didn’t like it.”

“Oh. Do you still have it?”

He shook his head ‘no.’ My brief curiosities put to rest, I looked at him a moment longer as he cut another peach up against the side of the can and ate it. _ Buy more of those next time you’re out_. He drank the juice and placed the now-empty can on the table.

“I’ll leave you alone,” he said, standing.

“Are you sure?” I stood as well as he went to retrieve his coat and hat. “There’s more where that came from.”

Pulling the belt tight at his waist, he nodded a goodbye as he reached for the front doorknob.

I flung a hand to his shoulder, stopping myself before I touched him but he felt the motion and looked back with a slightly raised eyebrow as I retracted my hand.

“You can stop by whenever you want,” I offered with a small shrug. “I’m only ever here or the school when I’m not at the shop.”

He nodded, muttering a “Thanks” and hurried down the front steps. I didn’t close the door immediately afterward to watch him disappear into the shadows and rain; something in my heart urged me not to look away too soon.


	5. Follow Me Home, Late '63

Despite the strong desire to find him after work the following afternoon when I left school, I went straight home to consider what to do next. I knew I shouldn’t wait and wonder why I was growing increasingly nervous with every passing moment or why he would come to my home at night. I didn’t really believe that he had just ‘passed by’ yesterday. He _always _took the subway, unless the trains were down again or a station was closed. But I knew those were lies. He got off at or before my stop and walked here in the rain.

Why?

Sociability was not his forte as I had come to observe. It was sad, endearing, innocent even in a very perverse way: one formulated from a history of negative encounters and relationships and I wish I knew exactly what they were. In an even _stranger _way, I tried comparing him to a hurt Rottweiler puppy but instead of giving a sloppy smile if I pet his head, the tailor would probably grimace and stare for me to remove myself.

Ringing phone from the floor, the best place for the rotary.

On my knees, I answered, “Hello?”

A soft deep voice said my name. Something somewhere was taunting me.

“Walter? How did you –”

“You gave it to me on your first visit.”

I _ what? _ Oh… Right. Part of business.

“Oh. Well, how are you?”

“I’m closing early tomorrow.”

He closes early a lot when he knows there won’t be business and he can work in peace or leave the god-forbidden place to the cockroaches. But I would already be in the shop and he would suddenly turn the sign without a second glance in my direction. Now he was providing forewarning in case I had something better to do with my life.

“I - wasn’t planning on coming by tomorrow. But thank you… for contacting me.”

A moment of silence, not even breathing. “Okay…. Goodbye.” Click and dial tone.

_ What the _ … I held the receiver in my hand, staring at it like a child to his parents when they say something ridiculous. _What do you mean Santa’s not real_? I replaced the phone on the cradle, a sense of catharsis washed over me when it settled back into position. Then I smiled, realizing he would have needed to scrounge up my number from the customer files, or pulled it off an old tag. He would have had to look for it. Now I knew, I was opening him up to the world. Maybe not the world. Maybe just to me. But I felt that he could be acclimated into a world where he would be admired by one person at a time.

Then to the phone which was no longer a form of transmitting my thoughts to Walter, I said, “Tomorrow.” Tomorrow I would think of something else.

* * *

When tomorrow came and the school day ended early for winter break, I took my time cleaning and gathering everything up. A stop in the teachers’ lounge and front office and I bore the light flurry as I walked. It didn’t matter what time it was but it struck me that Walter did not specify a time when he would close early. ‘Early’ was typically around five or six and I had presupposed this prior to traveling.

Upon entering the store almost half an hour later, his head flew up from the sewing machine in the rear and nodded a greeting.

“Hello, Walter,” I sighed. I hated that walk. I collapsed into the chair and hoped that a quick sleep would wash over me.

“Didn’t think you’d come,” he said after a few moments.

“Force of habit I suppose,” I said, offering a small smile before I shut my eyes to the front windows.

After closing and Walter resettled himself in the back, a man who appeared to be straight from the Mafia rapped at the front door, pinstripe suit, fedora, and all. He saw me, saw Walter, knocked again, and shouted, “Hey. You open this. I got something to pick up.”

Walter looked at me and grudgingly stood, passing to the front and opened the door for the man.

The exchange of information and handling of money and product. We expected the man to leave immediately but instead, he stopped to inspect the new suit before he spat out his complaint.

“What kind of a piss-ass job do you do here, huh? I was referred to you and trusted your service.”

“Blame whoever referred you. He sent you to this piss-ass place. Maybe he didn’t want you to look good.”

The man huffed and then noticed me in the corner looking up at him from my book.

“What’re you looking at, bitch? You agree or what? Either I got a bad referral, or the tailor here wants me to look bad.”

This man was a dumbass, grade A. Shut up and leave me alone, I thought. And then I wondered if Walter could fight.

My curiosity was fulfilled when I stated that indeed, the tailor was horrible but the man should have known better than to come here. “By the looks of the suit you’re wearing right now, you already have your own tailor. So I wonder what you’re doing here. Did something happen to him?”

Two steps towards me and Walter shattered the counter with the man’s head. He was on the floor before I even realized what had happened. My breath stuck as I stared at the slow trickle of blood to the floor from his temples. Walter stepped over the body, dragged him out the door and down the street, and laid it against a trashcan. He came back, looked at me, looked at the counter, went outside, and punched through the front door.

“The police can take care of that,” he grumbled.

Make it look like a burglary. Except that the owner would discover it and perhaps blame Walter for the mishap. It was dark out now and even if someone had actually seen what had happened, they wouldn’t give a shit. A brief moment of shock dissipated as I understood his plan and didn’t ask questions; I helped him brush up some of the rubble and dispose of it out back. He ignored the already dried blood on his knuckles as he folded up the suit and tossed it under the counter before we left.

His eyes were dark and thin, his face tired and slightly flushed as we rode the subway home together. Just before my stop, I asked if he wanted dinner that night. As the doors slid open and he did not respond, I stood and left, waving a goodbye. Not five feet from the train, he appeared beside me. We walked in silence up and out of the station and jumped broken turnstiles to jog up the wide stairs to the surface. Snow hit our faces and I wordlessly led him to my apartment on the corner where he had been twice before. I hoped that he would not leave in the same manner and thin-lipped distaste as he had the first time.


	6. A Good Distraction, Late '63

I dropped my schoolbag on the floor beside the phone and turned to the sink to wash my hands. “So what would you like?”

He stood in front of the door where he had not budged since entering and shrugged, glancing around before he took off his coat and hat, hanging them on the railing. Stepping forward, he tentatively sat down at the small round kitchen table, his side against the back of the chair. I gathered up the bills and mail that obscured the surface, tossing them on the floor. If I ever had a dog, that is where it would lie, in the physical mess that was evidence of a selfish consumerist society.

“Pasta it is,” I declared.

As I rummaged for ingredients from the warped cabinets, Walter asked how my day was, a question he had only just discovered about a week ago when I complained to him angrily about the other teachers.

‘_ You know their biggest problem with me, Walter? They say I don’t smile enough at the students! Parents have complained, _ behind my back _ that I seem threatening.’ _

_He peered above his takeout and said,_ _‘You smile.’_

_ ‘At you, but that’s different.’ _

_ ‘How?’ _

_ I shrugged and the conversation ended there. _

Now his eyes widened slightly, waiting for a response as I was lost in my thoughts. I told him that today was uneventful, but I felt better after he beat up the mobster this evening.

“Better?”

“I don’t know. It made me smile. Is that sick?” I turned around, gripping the edge of the countertop behind me. 

“A little warped,” he said, adding that it wasn’t the first time he made it look like a burglary. “Assholes come in all the time. If the boss is around, I don’t give them correct change. I leave a stain on their shirt that the wife will think is lipstick. Tell them they smell.”

I smiled dimly, amused at his creativity, and also keenly aware that I would have done the same things. I’d like to think so, anyway.

He crossed his arms and lifted an ankle to his opposite knee. He dressed well. White button-down with sleeves rolled to the elbow under a faded black buttoned vest and nice trousers, dress shoes. Why was I admiring this now? He was also never clean-shaven, and I tried to remember if maybe he ever was and I hadn’t noticed.

I asked, “And the other times?”

“What you saw.”

I nodded in a slow understanding gesture then prepared to boil the water and portion out dry pasta. I wasn’t surprised; people getting beat up was not an unusual sight these days and evidence of those fights was even less unusual.

Another question from him: “Why aren’t you scared of me?”

Turning back to face him, I breathed in deeply and asked, “Should I be? Whoever you’ve hurt before has no effect on me….I'm sure you had your reasons. You had a good reason tonight." I paused for a moment before my proposition. "Have you ever thought of becoming a vigilante?”

“No. Don’t want the responsibility.”

I vaguely remembered listening to radio reports about the Minutemen when I was very young. I wondered if he could have fit in with them. Again my small understanding nod and I waited for the water to boil. The gas stove clicked every few seconds interrupting the silence we held so expertly now between us. I thought the stove would explode any day, but so far the place still stood, even if the pipes leaked. I knew that someone would be dead in there one day; a night intruder that I would take care of with my own bare hands.

An exaggeration. But I imagined it nonetheless as Walter’s eyes flickered. He set his foot back on the floor and sat up straight slapping hands on knees.

“Tell me why all of this. And don’t ask me any questions. Why?” His voice was harsh, probing, hurting.

“What do you-?” But the look in his eyes demanded a real answer, which made me think he already had a guess as to what I was going to say and he needed confirmation to his suspicions. He needed me to tell him why he was here, why did I speak to him, what did I think of him. I wondered what he would do if I told the truth. That made me afraid in those moments before I spoke again.

I took a step forward to stand in front of him, skirt barely brushing his knees, and placed five fingertips down on the table. I looked him in the eye, my words falling in hushed nervousness before I could catch them and pick out what would later leave a bad taste in my mouth. “What do you want to hear from me? Why did you come here tonight? You never _almost _get off the train. You say no and you keep riding. What am I supposed to think? Are we friends?” I gestured to him. “Walter, I’m attracted to you!” In half-nervous chuckling, I continued, “Do you want me to explain that? I just _am _ and I could list all the damn cliché reasons if you want to hear them. It’s been nice, it’s pleasant, time with you.. those cheap meals and the train rides home, even if you barely utter a word and can’t even break a smile. You could push me out the door at any time, but you don’t.” I sighed and crossed my arms tight, taking a half step back to examine my faded floorboards. He was still expressionless. “I like you. But, I can tell that something has been nagging at your head as well, so maybe you should tell me what you’re doing here.”

More silence and an averted gaze.

After another moment, I turned back, expecting him to get up at that moment and leave like he has twice before. My face was warm. I just admit something I didn’t expect to spew from my tongue so soon. I _ was _afraid, for the first time since meeting him, but I wasn’t afraid of _him_. I was afraid of _myself_, what else I might say or do and their consequences. More silence pervaded the room as he took in my words, muddling them over as he relaxed back in the chair. He probably has never heard words like those before. A woman, attracted to him? Never.

And he unable, unwilling to respond. It's easy to say no, to push someone away, to be disgusted. Silence...silence was not necessarily bad. Whatever it was he _couldn’t _tell me... perhaps he just didn’t know how.

The water was boiling and I poured in the shells and stirred and waited, the air heavy with unsaid words and actions. I was tense, my blood rushing through my face and hands, only becoming warmer as I stood over the stove and steam.

He stood and asked for water. I motioned to the cabinet of glasses and he shuffled over to pour his desired refreshment from the tap.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” I said.

He glanced over at me before coming to stand against the counter, sipping the tap water.

During one pause, I reached over and placed light fingertips on his forearm. Before I even realized what my body had done, my lips were to his in a testing kiss with only the pressure of a breeze. I don’t remember the last time I kissed someone.

I released for a moment, leaving the smallest space between our mouths as I wrapped a hand around to turn his face towards me, shifting my body slightly as well. This was his chance to run. Another kiss just as light before I pulled back, unable to meet his eyes, and turned my attention to the cooked pasta. Twisting the knob of the stove and removing the saucepot from the gas, I passed around him to the sink, careful not to look. As I drained the shells, I whispered to the basin, nearly choking on my words in fearful, nervous embarrassment, “If you want to leave... I’ll just portion this into a Tupperware.”

_ I should have done dishes earlier_.

_ And I should have definitely not just done _that.

I was amazed when he sat back down instead of leaving right then.

* * *

Silence except for food in mouths, but this was not the type of silence that we had practiced for over a month. This silence was of the same degree experienced while walking down an alleyway two hours past midnight in a trickling rain.

I felt my legs trembling, trying to contain the nervousness from my actions. I finished and sat back, pulling up my legs to sit cross-legged on the wobbling chair.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He looked up after ingesting another bite of food, lips slightly parted in the formation of an uncertain attempt to reply.

Phone rings. How convenient…

I looked at him for a moment, stoic and silent as he stabbed at the remaining bits in the bowl, before I picked up the phone and receiver from the floor beside his chair. “Hello?... Yes, it is … Yes, I am so sorry…. Now? Oh, that’s – are they? Oh. Okay. Give me a moment…. Yes…. Goodbye.”

I slammed the receiver down. “I completely forgot I was supposed to tutor tonight. Walter,” a deep sigh as I placed the phone on the table, “don’t leave yet. Please. The sofa’s right there. This won’t be long.”

A small nod and he retreated to the back as I opened the front door.


	7. Fabric and Flesh, Late '63

After almost an hour tutoring the brightest kid in my class on something she missed due to the flu, the mother knocked on the front door and I had to apologize profusely for missing the appointment at the school but yes, it’s fine that they disturbed my dinner tonight and it won’t happen again. Okay, yes, see you all at school.

Clicking and bolting the doors shut behind them, I sighed and passed through the small kitchen to the back of the apartment. Walter had hidden himself well the entire time, sunk down into the cushions, arms tight around his chest and feet crossed on an armrest. I thought he was napping although it was more likely that he just ignoring me with his head turned into the cushions. I didn’t care to test my theory - to say his name or any other words. I would prefer it if he lay in peace for a while and let me reorganize my thoughts.

Pivoting myself on the armrest above his head, I stretched out an arm, fingers flexed to touch his hair. Just to feel. Breath stuck in my throat, I hoped that he really was asleep.

Snapping myself back just as he shot open his eyes, I muttered, “You can stay. I won’t bother you.”

His eyebrows rose in a _ Really? _ gesture.

“Do you want a blanket?” He would say no, he was fine.

He gripped himself tighter and huddled deeper into the formless cushions, squeezing his eyes shut to the room and myself. We would not talk about what I had done and I would not grant myself permission again to do so until I was sure he would not run from me. I turned to shut off the ceiling light from the corner, leaving the kitchen aglow in the late hour.

I finished my work in the silence, unsure what the kiss meant to either of us. He did not pull away or grunt in distaste; his lips hadn’t even furled when I motioned to kiss him the second time. Which in my mind meant that he did not entirely dislike it, it just meant that he did not know what to do, that he did not _want _to do anything. However, a neutral response was better than the very plausible abandonment of our friendship. 

The next time I looked at the clock, it was 1:32 and I looked to my left. Walter had flung his arms behind his head during a deep stretch but remained sprawled in silence. Sitting at my table with hands clasped tight atop piles of loose-leaf sheets and teachers’ manuals, I stared at the back of the sofa and his arms, the remainder of his body still concealed. Shadows flickered through my single window in the living space, tracking their small forms along corners and creases in the woodwork and walls.

I suddenly shivered, well aware of how weak my heat was. But instead of climbing up my small creaky staircase to go to bed, I shut off the remaining light and curled up on the floor against the sofa beside Walter’s dangling arms.

I would not sleep well that night nor would I dare touch him again. His mere presence gave me the security I never even knew I needed. Shortly after I made myself as comfortable as possible, he whispered, “Should I leave?”

“No.”

He tugged his arms back down tight and flipped to his right side, staring into the darkness.

Perhaps I should have retrieved a spare blanket for him. But it was upstairs and right now I had no desire to leave where I was.

* * *

In a half-dreaming state, I felt myself being placed up from the floor to something not so hard, hearing a brief rustle before I dozed off again. 

Awakening to the sun in my eyes, I squinted and remembered that Walter had placed me here before leaving in the night. I smiled to myself, knowing he was probably asking himself _ Why _right now.

* * *

I was late to classes, reprimanded severely by the principal, and stalked on the way home. I only realized the latter when I was feet from the tailor’s and a man called my name harshly.

A co-worker. Another reason why I hated my job. He asked where I was going, if I wanted to do anything, why haven’t I spoken to him?

_ No, no, and you’re a creep_, I wanted to say. I slapped away an arm that attempted to reach out, pulled in closer by an opposite hand, and freed when Walter finally emerged from the shop and punched the man in the jaw without a word.

The man stumbled back. “Who the fuck are you?” he screamed at Walter before threatening him with a harsh step forward.

Another punch on the opposite side of the jaw and he fell. Walter slammed him against a nearby fire hydrant, hunching down with flaring eyes.

“Doesn’t matter. Get out of here and leave the lady alone.”

It might have been overkill; the instructor wasn’t exceptionally built and Walter had already beaten him. I averted my gaze away and let them stare each other to death. As I stepped back towards the shop, Walter got up and followed me in. I turned back around briefly to watch my co-worker slink off, wiping the blood from his face.

When we got inside and I shut the door behind me, I demanded Walter show me his hand.

“Just get over here and give me the damn thing. I have bandages-”

“It’s nothing,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“It’s not nothing. Now get _ over _ here and let me wrap it up.”

He frowned and stood across the counter, placing his hand on the surface. His knuckles were bloody and I wiped it clean with a napkin from my bag.

“We have to carry around these things,” I said, extracting gauze, “nurses are usually busy.”

Suddenly I found that I was angry as I wrapped his hand tightly. I felt him looking at me as I worked but I couldn’t meet his eyes right now.

I was flustered because I didn’t understand. I felt foolish. I wanted to know what he thought of me, if he had thought of the kiss, if he really accepted me now in his life, this invasion that he never expected and almost certainly never wanted.

When I finished, I dropped his hand on the counter and turned away. He did as well in resignation that I would remain in his presence. Only here, he was a captive under my eyes.

He murmured, “Don’t ask questions.” _I won’t tell you why I helped you_, I imagined him saying. It remained that he had defended me twice, although this latter time was completely optional. He _could _ have stayed inside and ignored us but he had taken an interest of his own volition – stop thinking about it, my mind told me. Just fucking stop.

I looked at Walter again as he returned to his machines and needles, his lone friends in the construction of human vanity and the desired form. The colors and fabrics with which he worked did not quite suit him. At any point in his life, he could have quit and found another job in a different industry. Why textiles, I wondered, for a man that refused the touch of flesh, his fingers rejoiced in exploring the varying materials and patterns and feelings of softness and roughness. It was not his ideal work and any complaints he kept well hidden.

He knew what stitches and colors and fabrics complemented one another even in poor lighting. He knew what these clothes would look like on the people that purchased them, only ever slightly disappointed in himself when a customer was not satisfied. He would rip seams with enough care as to never have to waste more than half an inch on width of fabric.

He flexed his now bandaged hand, fingers stretched to work just as hard as his good hand. Rarely did he wince in pain but I believed that the one that escaped under his eye was not a result of physical anguish. The twitch was nervousness, embarrassment.

“Guess you don’t need me anymore,” he said.

I was taken aback by the break in silence. “What? No, what is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re safe now. Don’t need me.”

“That’s not – that’s not it at all! I didn’t mean for you to become involved.” I sighed, “Why don’t you get it? Am I really the only person that’s given a shit about you? I can understand your distrust if that’s been your life. Most people these days see their lives like that but there’s always _something _that gives a glimmer of hope. Otherwise, the street would be filled with suicide victims.”

I only received more silence as I slouched back in my seat.

“Must you?” he muttered.

“What?”

“Help me. Why do you have to?”

“I don’t have to. But neither do you refuse.” _ You do nothing, Walter; forgive me if you feel like I take advantage of that_. “I'm sorry if - if any of this has been unwelcome.”

Stay put. Stay here. Stay with hands gripped firmly instead of enveloping his face. But I couldn’t even listen to myself. I got up and stepped towards him to kneel at his side.

Don’t touch him. Don’t. Do. It.

His eyes drifted away to the work he had left to come to my aid and sat still with frozen hands. My own fingers wrapped up towards his opposite cheek, “Walter-” _ ‘look at me’_, I was about to say but his hand snapped up to enclose my wrist tightly in bony digits, tugging up my entire body.

Deep blue eyes flared as he turned his head down to peer at me with such contempt that any other woman would have struggled to break free. I would not consent. Nothing but breath pervaded the air before I whispered his name again.

The hand around my wrist contradicted everything in one motion as his nails dug deep into my skin. I would not say his name a third time. I would not display my shock and throbbing pain. I glared at him, demanding some action; otherwise, I would pull away and leave.

Our faces were only inches from each other; his thin lips revealed the slightest distaste at the proximity as he closed the space between us, pausing just long enough for me to appreciate the stillness of his eyes, before he initiated an awkward mismatched kiss. I gripped the back of his chair tightly, my other arm still raised at his side. My knees dug into hard floor as I strained up and he bent into the kiss, just as soft, just as light as that which I had given him but with less surety. His dry lips trembled, closed against mine. If he could only relax …

An attempt to retrieve my arm from his grasp failed; he held tighter, restricting the blood from my hand and my fingers tingled with the loss of circulation. Withdrawing his lips from this vile act, I pursued the second attempt, despite the even rougher hold on my wrist and the pain that was shooting down my legs and back.

As before, he did not pull back, nor did he speak, but in an attempt to do so, or perhaps to draw a breath, I took advantage of his barely parted lips to kiss him once more, fully and deeply. Nothing passed through my mind and I finally withdrew with downcast eyes, focused on the buttons of his shirt, before leaning back the next moment and he released his grip.

The soft gauze that enveloped his palm and knuckles had left an imprint on my wrist, red prints from his fingers on its underside. I rubbed my skin as I knelt back down beside Walter on the hard cold floor.

“Customers might come in,” I whispered, standing. It was my turn to run away.


	8. The 'Date', Late '63

I could not hide from him for long. For the past five days, I tortured myself, wondering why, why, fucking _ why _did he kiss me. What drove him, what was he seeking suddenly. I suppose it was an easy enough question to answer. He wanted to because it was about goddamn time that he physically expressed a suppressed interest that had only been witnessed during our silent hours spent in the shop. I was his only company besides the machines, I brought food on multiple occasions and many women knew that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. That wasn’t it, though. I wanted to be friends with him and then it became _this. _This… something. There would be no label, no words to describe our relationship at the moment. I knew that I had to come out of my haven and face him again. The worst thing to happen would be losing him because of something stupid.

A deep insatiable urge finally overtook me and subdued the last of my strength to hold back any further actions. I had to inquire; I had to know and I felt that he would tell me the truth if I demanded it.

It would soon be Christmas and evidence of the approaching holiday had been applied thoroughly to store displays and sale signs. I knew already that I _ had _to, _ wanted _to keep Walter company on that day, for both our sakes, even if it was just as mundane as any other time we spent together.

Snow continued to fall into the night when I made the trek to his shop. It was half an hour before closing; I would make it. I would make it if the trains ran for me, if they carried me to an end which I dared not predict. Flakes stuck to my hair and coat, shoes crunched through to the sidewalk covered in trash and bits of newspaper poked up from their dirty white graves on which I tread.

I halted the moment the shop was in sight, continuing slower, realizing that he was not present in the darkness behind the locked door, replaced window, and dangling skewed ‘Closed’ sign. I sighed and frowned, “Where the fuck did you _ go _?” I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where he lived but I approached the door anyway, just to make sure he wasn’t hiding in the back, asleep atop half-completed projects. He was not. I looked around me, observing a bum slip from the alleyway across the intersection and meander down the sidewalk. Looking back at the door and down to the knob, I noticed a slip of paper in the lock of the door, torn from a phonebook.

An address.

“Why would you…,” I whispered to myself. I shivered in the cold as soft snow fell and turned back to catch the late train.

* * *

By the time I found the apartment building and up the cracked icy steps, it was about 9:30. The snow had not stopped and it was about five degrees colder as I searched for his name on the placard and rang the buzzer. I waited. Nothing. I felt sharp hungry stares on my back and I buzzed again, relieved to hear footsteps and the unbolting of several locks and chains. Walter opened the doors, revealing himself in his work attire and stepped back to let me in, not meeting my eyes as he led me down a short hallway and to his own dimly-lit, nearly unfurnished room.

I stomped the snow from my feet. He didn’t move or say anything as I tried to formulate a coherent thought in my head.

“Why put your address in the door tonight?” For me to find him, but I wanted to hear it myself.

“Been there every night since last week. Knew you’d come back eventually.”

“I’m sorry -”

“Why did you run from me?” He was hurt. He had finally gathered the courage to pursue something by himself and I left him dangling out on an edge that had taken me five days to recover from. I didn’t know what else to say. He had been waiting for me since the day I left his shop after the kiss. I was flattered, surprised at his reluctance to give up, but ashamed and heartbroken that I had hurt him.

“I don’t know….” That was the truth. It was hard to answer the question ‘Why?’ anymore. We did these things because we wanted to, whether it made us feel better about ourselves or to make others feel better. Defensive mechanisms had clicked on in my brain that night but I still don’t know who I was trying to protect.

Walter had not defended me in those close encounters in and in front of his store; he punished those men because they needed to be punished. Was a kiss likely to parallel these motivations? Did he kiss me because he thought that I needed to be kissed? In my mind, it was the opposite; he needed the experience, to receive something soft and kind instead of dealing harsh punches. A balance had been overturned in his heart somewhere in his life and he was now struggling to regain his footing in the world. I wanted nothing more than to reach out to him and pull him close. Instead, I leaned back against the door and looked at him.

I struggled with my words: “I don’t know… Because, if I had stayed, I would have wanted to keep kissing you. And I wouldn’t have been able to stop.”

It would be too much for him.

“I’m sorry,” I added.

His features hid his thoughts well through a forlorn stare, eyes shifting from me to the door frame to elsewhere in the small apartment. After several long silent moments in which I would have much rather pursued other endeavors, he crossed his arms, leaned against his table, and finally uttered my name to catch my attention again.

“Glad you came. Nothing to do, though.”

“And here I thought you might have planned the night,” I joked.

The resulting thin broken smile across his lips disappeared as instantly as it had come and he shifted back to standing straight, hands plunged in pockets.

“Central Park?” I suggested. It was late, it was cold, and it was dangerous but it was someplace to go with him. The darkness would shroud us well in case he feared being seen with a member of the female sex.

His eyes widened at the very speculation that this, God-forbid, might be a date.

“What?” was all that emerged from his mouth.

“What do you mean ‘what’? Haven’t you been to the Park before?” I knew that he wasn’t sure how to react to this offer. “Not like we haven’t been alone together for hours before, Walter. It doesn’t have to be long.”

After quiet deliberation he wordlessly consented, retrieving his shoes, coat, hat, and gloves and followed me out into the cold.

* * *

An hour and a half later, after a long and quiet walk in which Walter was always a few paces ahead of me, never checking back, we stopped at the west side of the reservoir. I rested on a bench, huddling up into a fetal position with arms wrapped around my legs. From this vantage point, I observed him against the backdrop of the city skyline and trees and the very few stars that managed to illuminate bright enough through the thin cloud cover and lights from urbanization. He was burrowed deep in himself, tight in coat and hat as he stood at the barrier. I wondered what drifted through his mind as he looked out. I was reminded of the time it was storming and we were trapped in the shop and he stood at the door, looking out at the rain. Did he ever really _look _at anything or just pass his eyes over evidence of life and the cycle of the world, never absorbing the little beauty that still existed?

I stood and went over to him, squeezing myself into the foot of space between Walter and the barrier. He inched back, motivated by what I supposed was a desire to not have his body pressed up against something foreign. Peering at me for a moment before looking beyond out over the still water, Walter extracted his hands from his pockets and applied them to my upper arms like a doctor searching for cancerous lumps.

His eyes returned to perceive what he had done, how his hands came to grip firmly to the extensions of what he had previously held bare. Leather gloves creaked against heavy cotton as he flexed his fingers. Half a step closer, he bent his head down so the brim of his hat obscured his visage and barely brushed my face.

I whispered his name.

He peeled his hands away. I snatched them back, lowering them in a firm grip between us.

He still stared downward and I bent forward a bit to catch his eyes. Maybe it was shame that stared back, maybe fear or loss of hope.

“My mother … was a whore,” he said, his voice low to prevent even the bare trees from hearing. “At home until I was ten and suffered. Found out she was killed by her pimp and all I said was ‘Good.’ ” He raised his head slowly, intermittently talking to me and the air, hoping that a breeze would steal his words forever. “Put me in the Home, there for six years. It wasn’t … bad. I was good at things. But I can’t … be anyone but this. Like this.”

Maybe he wanted to say more, to explain more, but I understood enough, taken aback as I was in the sudden reveal. He jerked his hands away to bury back in his pockets. When I thought he was not going to speak again, he said, “Don’t delude yourself,” and was about to turn away when I grabbed a chunk of his coat in my hand to anchor him to me.

“I’m not -,” my mouth was agape as I paused to formulate the right words, still absorbing what he just confessed, and spoke slowly so as to not miss a thought. “This is no _delusion_, Walter. You are worth no less than any other man, perhaps more so because you’re not a filthy bum who eyes up women and seeks pleasures of self-satisfaction.”

I wasn’t sure if my words got through to him or if I should go on. Did he believe anything I said?

His eyes quivered in deliberation and I released the cloth one finger at a time, reluctant since my fingers were numbing, but I lingered for a moment more until I enveloped his cheek in my palm. Tracing my fingers along his rough stubbled jawline, I applied a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth to ensure him of my sincerity, just in case he needed it. He did not respond at first, stiff and unwavering, downcast eyes on my wrist. I snuck my other hand into his pocket to grip a tight fist, palm to smooth leather seams. He unclenched gradually as he responded, his returning kiss shaky. Warm breath contrasted with the surrounding cold, our faces and lips frigid, defrosting with growing intensity. Breaking away in gasps, clouds of moisture evaporating into the air, I swore his lips creased upward briefly before he entwined our fingers in his pocket.

My exposed hand tingled in sudden pain against his face and I swiftly replaced my numbing fingers into my own coat. Walter tilted his head away, again looking down at the ground before he muttered that we should go.

“You’re freezing.” He tugged me away to follow him out of the park, our hands concealed deep in a trench coat pocket.

The night had not been devoid of confessions but we only partook in those that would melt into the obscurity that was this relationship. Things to be forgotten with each passing day and never discussed. Wordless affirmations of this _something _were penetrating into our minds which harbored buds of emotions that simply needed time to grow. Drifting words evolved into soft kisses and thus into enveloped hands that hid in a dark fold of fabric between our bodies, safe from prying eyes, safe from Walter's own eyes.

We were obscured figures in the darkness, our passing only evidenced by footprints in thin gleaming white that would be covered up again by the morning.

He held tight, afraid that I might disappear and I gripped back to anchor him closely to myself and thus to the world.


	9. A Friend, Late '63

He left me at my doorstep with a small nod and shifting eyes, a broken smile on the verge of full formation before the invisible puppet master cut the strings from Walter’s lips. The tailor trudged down the sidewalk without looking back as I entered my warm home.

I knew by now that he would open up more in time. This, whatever this was, was on his terms, his timeline, his mindset. What he had told me in the park about his mother was not completely shocking. It explained his level of discomfort and bleak outlook on the world that I saw behind his eyes every time I spoke to him.

After that night, a couple days passed in which we held our traditional fine dining in the back of the shop, still with few words and few feelings expressed. There were no nervous hands or wandering fingers, no abrupt half-confessions or kisses. Nothing changed from before although I swore that he worked slower now to preserve our company in the cold corners of the tailor’s shop.

I did not grow bored with the passing hours into days as might have been expected. I was in no rush to pursue a real relationship or to jump into bed with the first man that laid eyes on me. I understood now that Walter was unlike other men in this city these days due to his unfortunate childhood and lack of healthy maternal figurehead. His mistrust was not something that could ever be cleansed from his memories or his behaviors, at least in reference to the general female population. Yet I believed that every word he spoke to me was laced with a small hope for progression towards tender actions and feelings. The rare ‘Thank you’s that I received upon delivering food and ‘So long’s upon stepping off the train were not forced, not acts of politeness that one may deal out to strangers. His sincerity was _sincere_, unlike that which he spat to customers and his boss. His job grew more bearable as we came to know each other because I did not threaten him, I was not afraid of him, and I never bothered him. I knew when he would say ‘Yes,’ when he would say ‘No,’ and I nodded and smiled with him as I did with my students. Walter needed to be assured of his safety around me.

I wish I could tell him that I would never leave him to be alone again because it was the truth. Every time the thought sprung into my mind, my face gave it away. Walter asked if there was something wrong or looked at me with the raised eyebrow.

‘No…. Nothing is wrong,’ I would say. A nod and smile as I returned to my book and he to his work.

This happened at least three times between our night in the Park and Christmas Eve.

* * *

Suddenly it was one of the most cliché and commercialized times of the year besides Valentine’s Day. Should I get Walter anything? Was I supposed to? And would he even appreciate it if I found the right gift? Back and forth my mind turned, still with no answer by the time I had trudged through the snow to his apartment. 

I pushed the buzzer a couple times, unsure if the damn thing even worked while I was shivering on the stoop. Suddenly I thought that I should have checked the store first, but when I left my own home it was already past ten and I doubted that he would still be there. Right?

A good minute passed and I buzzed again. Really laid my finger into the bastard. I was startled by the rattling of trash down the street, heavy footsteps echoed someplace down an alleyway, and I stomped in front of his door.

“Where the hell are you?” I hissed. “God _ damn _.”

The waiting allowed me more time to think and reason out a possible gift, but at this point, I figured that if he was not home then he would either be at the shop or on the way back from the shop. I cursed myself for not having any paper on me to leave a note; I typically did in my schoolbag, something that I did not carry around over breaks.

I envisioned myself leaping at Walter out of anger, glee, and a desire to envelop myself in something warm. He would stare at me with raised eyebrows and pluck me off like a bit of dust. I laughed to myself, interrupted by a harsh voice.

“Keep doing that and someone might toss you a penny.”

A swift about-face from the door to the street, and there stood Walter, looking up at me from the sidewalk.

“How long have you been here?”

“Not very. Come on. Open up.”

“Inviting yourself over now?” He came up the steps, ruffling through his pockets for his keys. “Maybe I don’t want company.”

“Says the man who appeared on my doorstep one night claiming to have just been walking past.”

An innocent glare shot back at me as he pushed the doors open and I followed in.

“Didn’t believe me?”

“Of course not.”

When we were inside his unit and I was just about to strip out of my heavy winter coat, he ordered me to stay put. 

“Keep that on,” he said.

“Are we going someplace?”

I watched him shuffle through a stack of papers and books beside his mattress, searching for something. I did not witness what he discovered, as his back was towards me and my eyes drifted around to the kitchen area.

Heavy footfalls on tile back towards me, he slapped off the lights and brushed past to the front door.

“Come on.”

I was curious. I announced my suspicions. “What are we doing?” This was odd. Very odd.

“You know what they say about curiosity.”

I smiled softly and followed him out into a fresh snowfall.

* * *

After about ten minutes on our way to a mysterious location in which Walter was again always at least a step in front of me, I scooted up beside him and entwined a hand down into his coat pocket. My head bent down against the wind, I did not notice if he cared or if he flung his eyes in warning towards me. 

He unclenched his leather fist to take my fingers in his and muttered, “You’re lucky it’s dark out.”

“Wouldn’t dare otherwise.”

We came to a restaurant around a corner, every table already full and a crowd of people waiting for their turn to dine.

I halted, tugging my hand from his pocket and stared in shock. He stopped a few paces up.

“What?” he asked back at me.

“I – nothing.” I caught up and we went inside, pushing through to the maître d’.

My mind refused to wrap itself around the new situation. Walter had taken the initiative; I hadn’t planned anything for this evening and apparently he had made dinner reservations at a pseudo-fancy place. I felt underdressed but not enough so that I couldn’t take off my coat as we waited. 

We were one of the younger couples in the restaurant, standing among middle-aged businessmen and women with shiny watches and gold jewelry. I immediately wondered how Walter could afford something like this tonight. But maybe this was his way of paying me back.

A waitress led us a few minutes later to a corner table in the back where we wouldn’t have to stand out against the throngs of people in nicer clothes. As we settled down with menus displayed before us, I immediately told Walter that he didn’t have to do this.

“You don’t like it here?”

“No! No, I do. I really do,” I urged. “I’m … just impressed. Surprised.”

A shrug. “I wanted to. Convenient you were at my door when I needed you to be.”

Back to the menu, tired eyes and thin lips.

_ Wow_, was all I could think as I picked out an entrée. I wondered when he had come up with this idea. If it was when we were at the Park or over the days that passed after that.

As we placed our orders and waited, I looked around to observe the money that pranced around the restaurant, evident in the wines and platters displayed on the tablecloths and stains that splattered cloth napkins tucked in necks. I was content in our corner, free to people-watch and laugh at others’ worries. Husbands told their wives about business affairs that had fallen through, wives told husbands about new curtains and the neighbors’ affairs. 

It was then that I felt another one of those _pangs_, deep down in my heart as I looked back at Walter, with his hands folded in his lap, and eyes flickering back and forth across the table and laid out utensils. He caught me looking and raised a corner of his mouth – another attempted smile. I would have liked to reach out to touch the dimple before it faded back into his expressionless features.

“When do you go back to school?” he asked.

“Little after New Years. For lesson plans.”

“Do you want to?”

_ No. I wish I had more time to do things like this_. A shrug. “It can’t get any worse.”

A nod, shifting blue eyes away again until the food came and we ate with only the background noise of the other patrons to distract us from our thoughts.

It was almost another hour until we were out of there. Standing on the corner, we waited for a taxi in the snow that had gotten worse as had the temperature. One quiet ride to my apartment later and I insisted that he come in.

“Thank you for dinner. It’s late, let me make up the sofa for you - ”

“Wait,” he ordered. A firm hand around my wrist just as I had begun to ascend the stairs to my room to gather blankets. “I – I found – you something.”

With wide eyes and a bit-down bottom lip, Walter pulled out a tiny worn gift box from his coat, shoving it towards me.

“I – thought you would like it. I saw it and – well. Open it.”

I shot him a curious questionable gaze as I opened the tiny box.

Inside laid a pin of a schoolboy with a lunch pail and book under one arm. What made it special was that the boy was a redhead. I laughed and felt a hot blush rise to my face, slapping the back of my hand to my mouth to hide my foolish grin.

“Walter…. This… this is adorable. Thank you. I’ll wear it for class.”

I stepped forward to envelop him in a tight hug, pin and box gripped tight in one hand, a fistful of fabric in the other. I squeezed tight before kissing his cheek and released. His downcast eyes avoided mine but I saw his own face flush ever so slightly after the contact.

“Let me make up the sofa for you,” I said.

“I shouldn’t – ”

“Yes. You should.”

* * *

A creepy darkness broken only by faint moonlight and streetlamps fell across everything. The accentuated shadows and trails of light were disturbed only by Walter’s movement to the newly accessorized sofa, complete with pillows and blankets. 

He muttered a ‘Thank you’ and I nodded excessively, still gleeful from the gift, and shuffled back into the kitchen to retrieve a requested glass of water. When I turned back, he had stripped to his undershirt and I saw how slender and muscular he actually was. I imagined he must work out daily – I gagged on my own fantasy before it was even completed.

I shoved the glass at him which he gulped down in a couple swallows. A nod of ‘Thanks’ and ‘Good night’ before he collapsed away from me, burying his head in the cushions like he had done the first night he slept here. I stood for a few more moments before retreating to lean against a wall, palm to forehead.

I realized suddenly that I was tired; it had just hit me like the drafty cold air from the window that couldn’t close. Police sirens broke what little silence prevailed for ten minutes at a time, interrupting whatever train of thought drifted in and out of my brain. I stood and listened to the different siren tones, to the screams, to the shuffling and cursing, before I was able to focus my attention on the breathing of the man that lay awake.

He knew I was still there. I knew that he knew and still I could not budge from my post. I turned away and fingered the little pin that I had temporarily placed on the table. I wondered what he must have thought upon finding it. Was this a custom design? I took it in a fist and ascended, despite the lack of sleep I knew I would achieve tonight.


	10. Chatting, Christmas '63

By 2:15, all that I had accomplished was that I had kicked my sheets everywhere in a mess to make myself comfortable. I was still wide awake, growing more impatient by the moment. My mind was still racing and it would not be calmed by trying to stay in bed and fall asleep. Therefore, I crept downstairs in a long and heavy flannel shirt, well aware that Walter, too, was still up. 

He was sitting at the small table, legs crossed with arms tight across his chest, head lolled down. The lights of passing cars and the streetlamps barely illuminated his form, stoic and silent like a night watchman at a museum, ready to spring at the slightest movement.

The floorboards creaked under my feet and he sighed, eyes rolling up, then his head.

“Can’t sleep either, hm?” I leaned against the wall opposite him, kicking my rotary away a few inches for room.

He shook his head.

“Yeah…. I know the feeling.”

I noted that he looked me up and down once before leaning his head back and closed his eyes. I took the opportunity to sit down cross-legged opposite him and clasped my hands tight in my lap.

The darkness and the silence in his company was immediately calming and I felt that if I curled up on my sofa right over there that I could fall asleep instantaneously. His mere presence was relaxing to my body and I wished there was a way to convince him to lie down next to me one night. He wouldn’t have to move, he wouldn’t have to touch me. Just feeling his warmth would be like a nice dose of melatonin to reset my internal clock.

“Walter…. I – uh – tonight was nice. I was kind of surprised, actually, that you planned that. But it made me really happy.” What was I saying? I was gushing out these words in broken phrases and sighs and smiles, biting a lip in between utterances, wondering exactly what I would say next.

He hadn’t moved which made it easier for me to talk if he wasn’t looking.

I continued. “I kind of wonder what provoked it, but I know you won’t tell me that. It’s only been a couple months, and I might have shocked you a few times in the past weeks…. What you told me about your mother –” Here, he opened his eyes to look at me properly. “– explains a few things to me. Thank you for telling me.”

After a few long moments of pondering silence, he asked, “Going to ask about my dad?”

I shook my head. “Would you tell me if I did?”

He stretched and slapped his hands down on his knees, peering at me through thin eyelids.

“He left before I was born. I thought he was great, though. Wrote an essay in school: ‘My Parents.’ You have your kids do that?”

I nodded. “Yeah… Some of them don’t like it.”

“Now you know why.” He leaned back and again crossed his arms tight, tucking his hands under his armpits.

I nodded again. “Yeah,” I sighed. “I suppose I do. Look-” There was so much I wanted to say. That I understood where he came from, why he was the way he was and none of it was very bad. I realized I could never _understand _the way I wanted to, but I had a good enough feeling. He was a good man, thus my feelings for him, something else I wish I could articulate accurately without great embarrassment. Was it possible to feel something like this after such a short period of time? Silly question. And he? What were Walter’s feelings? It was too hard to shake from my mind.

“Walter, I….”

“What?”

A hard swallow and I shook my head, looking away into the dark living area. “It’s nothing.”

We sat in prolonged minutes of more silence, the comfortable kind, the kind we had practiced. The kind in which my mind could go blank but refill itself occasionally with images from not-too-distant memories.

I looked back at his closed eyelids. “You’re not asking me ‘Why’ anymore, Walter.”

Without budging from his post, he said, “Should I? Don’t think I have to.”

Which I supposed was a good thing. It meant he was sure of himself now; I didn’t have to match my interpretation of him to his actual feelings, but I wondered if I was ever correct or if he just let my words slide.

I didn’t like awkward conversations_. So, Walter, in love with me yet? _ Stupid, not something that would ever fall from my lips, not anything I could logically assume. I did wonder, though, and this had increasingly come to bother me as the hours slipped by and I laid in my bed before descending to sit before him - I wondered if he would ever verbalize anything or if I had to guess some more from what was evidenced in the park that night or through the tiny Christmas gift I received.

“Would you do that again?” he asked, looking at me this time, disturbing my contemplation.

“Do what again?”

“Go to dinner. Out. Like today.”

I chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, of course I would. I’d like that.”

“Okay.”

He stood, fingertips lightly pressed to the table, and peered down at me. I looked back and smiled weakly, wondering if he was going to say anything. He didn’t. After another moment he turned away to retreat back to the sofa, maybe in a last-ditch effort to sleep.

I stood up after him and beckoned him to turn around with a light grip to his bicep, feeling his veins under my fingertips. My breath caught in my throat for just a moment. He peered at my hand atop his flesh, trailing his half-lidded gaze up to match my eyes. I wanted to say something, anything, just fucking _ tell _him what was running through my head and wait to see if I could pull a reply of the same magnitude. But I choked, fingers light on his skin, and bent my head down to stare at the creases in his pants.

He said my name. It was an order to look at him, to stop this foolishness that coursed through my veins.

I did look up, confused as to what my mind might have been planning. There was no threat that greeted me, just the blank but slightly inquisitive stare of deep blue eyes that was preserving something for just the right moment.

I immediately released and apologized, ready to turn away and retreat to my own haven a floor above.

He said my name again, softer but harsher. “There something I need to know?”

_ No, no, there’s nothing right now. _ “Yes, but it can wait.” There was something, something was forming in the back of my mind like a memory you can’t quite retrieve without a cue.

I don’t know if he believed me, but he nodded anyway with a soft grunt. “Okay. Don’t forget.”

_ Trust me, I won’t_. I gave him a nod and a smile.

“Tomorrow. Should we do something?” he asked.

A faint upturn of my lips, I was tired, but shocked again. “No. Let’s stay here. Weather’s supposed to be bad anyway.”

He complied by turning away, the signal to leave him alone for the night.

* * *

I awoke late. He must have come and gone at some point during the early hours as he had a different shirt under his vest. The weather was not so bad that we were trapped. Light flurries and a mix of rain and ice. The soft rapping at my windows was hypnotizing as Walter and I sat, picking books off my small shelves, enjoying the silence of the other’s company with the rain as the day’s soundtrack.

Returning late that afternoon with a bag of groceries from the only open convenience store a few blocks down, I found Walter writing in a small leather-bound notebook that he quickly slammed shut upon my entrance.

He had left to return to his apartment for a change of clothes and a shower hours prior, reentering with my key and was now huddled against a wall in the living space.

“Walter. Hey. Let’s go out again. Go –” _ Anywhere_, I thought, waving a hand around.

Silence and a stare were my answers for a few moments until he stood and brushed past me to lay a hand on his coat.

“Park was fine. Now?”

“Oh. Sure. Okay.”

* * *

I walked a few paces in front of him as we descended into the subway station, crowded with holiday travelers. Despite the weather, people wanted to experience their lives on Christmas. We were inadvertently split up temporarily; Walter stood several feet down from me on the platform. As we boarded the train, I pushed my way through throngs of people, able to stand in front of him for most of the ride. Generally, the population tonight was well-dressed, out for an evening play or musical with fancy dinner following. The women donned thick fur or heavy belted coats. The money was careful not to come into contact with the unemployed. I was curious as to the mixture of classes that rode tonight. Did they not have cars? Did they dare not drive in the wintery mix that fell from the skies? Oh, poor them.

Walter followed my gaze around the subway car, his face and body dangerously close to mine. The turns were always the most awkward experiences on the trains and I tried my best to keep my balance and not fall into him. I was tense and it took every ounce of my power not to reveal it; I hadn’t given much thought to the sexual attraction I felt, but it was difficult to ignore now as the crowds pushed us together and I recalled the subtle taste of his lips.

_ Dammit_.

We stood close to a door, he facing into the crowd and I looked out the window, hand tight on the metal pole to my left. I kept my eyes averted from him because God forbid anyone thought that we knew each other. 

Once he muttered for me to be careful. “Look out.” An emergency hand shot out to my back to tug me closer and I thanked him with a smile before his hand dropped back into his pocket.

“Bad tonight. Watch yourself.”

A larger man in a decent pinstripe suit stood behind me (I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was a relative of the man that came to bother Walter at the shop that day), his ass occasionally bumping me when the train accelerated and sped around bends. He was probably half-asleep and half-drunk when he practically fell against me before regaining his grip on the bar above his head. In turn, I nearly lost my balance, slamming a hand to Walter’s chest.

We looked at each other, my gaze in apology for touching him, but thankful that he was so steady. His eyes told me he was about to do something. Before I could stop him, he hissed at the man, “Keep to yourself in public. Find the whores if you need something.”

I mentally slapped a hand to my forehead and moved out of the way as much as possible as the man turned around revealing sweat stains through his suit.

“Who the fuck are you? She don’t have to stand there.”

Walter took a threatening step forward as the other bent down an inch. I had to interrupt. 

“It’s okay,” I waved a hand up to the man in defense. “There’s no room tonight. Not your fault. Okay?” A glare at Walter, a smile at the man. They sneered at each other before I returned my attention back to Walter, blocking him from the other man’s view.

Walter cast his eyes to the side but the moment I felt a hand on my ass, my eyes widened with a sharp intake of breath and Walter knew what to do. I tossed myself back against the closest door, catching the snicker and then horrified realization on the man’s face as Walter punched his nose into bloody oblivion. Another fist to the stomach and he gripped the man by his jacket at the shoulder.

No one really took notice except for the wives that slapped their husbands - ‘Why didn’t we take a goddamn taxi?’ they screamed. But this was another one of those things that just happened sometimes. A couple kids gawked, the adults stared, the beatniks found inspiration, and the hoodlums smiled and laughed as a shorter redhead beat the living shit out of a New York mobster.

The man pulled a gun from his suit, eliciting hushes from those close by, but Walter broke his wrists with a resonating crunch.

I half-laughed, half-frowned at the situation. Here was Walter, destroying a man for the third time in my presence. Walter shot a glare back to me – _ ‘What do you want me to do? _’ I shrugged - grunting as the man huddled to the floor and Walter sat on his back, like a cowboy on one of those fake riding bulls, with hands clenched against the base of the man’s neck.

“How many women have you done that to? How many were able to file charges before you shot them?”

I thought then, as I watched him harass the man in the pinstripe suit that these mobsters didn’t travel in groups anymore. There just weren’t many left and those that remained were being caught by the vigilantes, wherever they were these days. Others were beaten by men like Walter, who had some sense of moral absolutism left.

Bingo again.

I was mesmerized by his voice and the ease at which he could make these criminals repent for their wrongdoings. And he said he didn’t want to get into crime-fighting. It _would _be an extraordinary responsibility; something really big had to happen to make him change his mind.

The man was jabbering nonsense into the floor and people were trying to call for the subway authorities.

“Fucking _ Jesus_, Walter. Come on!”

He might not have heard me, but a stop was approaching fast and Walter got up, brushing off his pants and coat, readjusted his hat, and stepped over the idiot. The moment the doors slid open, Walter grabbed me by the hand and tugged me away to melt into the crowds that collected in masses up the stairs.

It was only about a five-minute walk into the Park where we stopped on the sidewalk, surrounded by dead trees with thin layers of white on their skeletal forms, remnants of birds’ nests tucked away high above. The Pond was partially frozen, reflecting any streams of star or moonlight that was able to filter down.

He released me and muttered a ‘Sorry’ in case any of the blood from his gloves transferred to my hands. There were small splotches, not too visible, nothing I couldn’t rub off on my coat.

He hushed my name as we stood beside each other. “I don’t know why you’re still around me. Not usually like this. Reverting back to how I was as a kid, lashing out.”

Strangely, it didn’t phase me. It was admirable.

“Walter, nothing you’ve done has put me off. I would have run after you caved in the counter with that man’s skull. This is the _ third time _ you’ve beaten someone who’s taken a step towards me.”

“Deserved it. Probably repeat offenders.”

I was right that he never did anything to help me personally, but of course it still meant something to me, his actions still affected me. He looked at me for a moment before returning a blank stare out at the people that meandered past, at the dead foliage, the evergreens, the rock formations. I wondered what he was thinking as he flexed his hands at his sides.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

A nod, peering sideways at me, before kicking a rock further into the pathway. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he uttered. He tugged his coat tighter, popping his collar as protection from the chill gusts.

“Supposed to do about what? Your job? Your life? Your-” I could stop guessing when he looked at me again, his tired and sad gaze glossing over my face. “Walter,” I said. “Do what you want. Keep doing what you’ve been doing. That’s why I’m here with you. Why I haven’t run from you. Just keep being who you are, that’s-” _ That’s the man I’m falling in love with_. But I couldn’t complete my verbalization and redirected my attention to the few passersby.

“What?” he asked, looking at me again from the corner of his vision.

“That’s all. I can’t tell you what to do with your life or how to act with me. But you shouldn’t doubt yourself, either. You’ve got beliefs and ideals, right? Do what they tell you to do.”

A pause between my lingering words and his next statement as he huddled into himself tighter.

“… Exception,” he whispered. “You’re the exception to those rules. Difficult for me to trust women.”

“Because of your mother.”

He gave a small grunt in agreement.

That’s why he told me then. I’ve seen it before with some of my students. When the parents don’t care about their children’s grades or even about the child himself, there’s suffering.

“Didn’t expect this. Don’t even know if I like it,” he muttered.

“What’s new can be frightening,” I said, reaching out to lightly take him by the arm, smoothing out little creases in his overcoat. “You haven’t kicked me away yet, so that’s something.”

I turned to face him properly, taking his face lightly in both hands. His eyes held steady but he was grimacing slightly since people were walking by. It was dark enough. I didn’t care. He was going to listen.

“Do you want me to make you a promise?”

He pried my hands away to drop back at my sides and shook his head ‘no.’ “I don’t like promises. Never know what might happen.”

“I think I know enough.” I took a step forward and hushed my voice when more people went by, fighting against the wind. “I can promise, that you will never do anything to scare me away.” I leaned in to close the remaining gap between us and kissed his cheek softly.

By now, any precipitation had subsided and everyone could go about their business dry and warm in each others’ arms, to Broadway and Rockefeller Center, to go home to families or have sex by their glowing fireplaces. I wondered where we would go when we were too frozen to move.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment, pulling back to look at him.

“Nothing to be sorry for.” Reaching up a hesitant gloved hand to tuck under my coat collar to my neck, he said, “But if I’ve been difficult, I understand.”

“You haven’t been. This is just... new territory. Being with another person, like this, it’s never exactly easy. It just..._ is _.”

After another few moments in silence, except for the passing traffic and honking of horns which I had just acutely become aware, we returned to the closest station to wait for a train.

I could not lie to the man beside me that dealt out retribution with a heavy fist. I also believed that he would never lie to me; he couldn’t. It was not his way of things. But as his blank gaze observed the scurrying of rats down the train tunnel, and scowled if someone accidentally brushed against him in passing down the platform, I wondered if his eyes would reveal the truth to me one day so his words would not have to. He was still young. He recovered from his childhood without being incarcerated and I was waiting until he punished more men than just those I had witnessed. 

He stood inches to my left and did not know that I was looking at him, readjusting his collar against the chilly air, his hat concealing his red hair and abundant freckles on his forehead.

It was December twenty-fifth, 1963, and I asked myself, _ Is it too soon? _


	11. This Something, Christmas '63

It was dark out now, as dark as it can get in a city of lights and concealed stars. The subway ride home was just as terrible as the ride going. People coming on and off in hordes, drunk, sober, with wives, husbands, children, clean, filthy. Cigar smoke drifted in on the fabric of men’s overcoats to mingle with cheap perfumes and hairspray. The air was disgusting, a cesspool of waste and dirty words. A tone-deaf child in the middle of the car tried to sing a Christmas carol before his mother slapped an angry hand across his mouth.

I sat tightly beside Walter, every inch of my left side against his right, feeling safer in his presence than I would in a police station. Walter would not hesitate, never look for an excuse to run if he ever thought I was threatened. And I smiled at this thought. 

_ He doesn’t do it for me, though. _

_ I wished he would. _

We were in the back of a car, reflecting on our exchange as I looked out the window past him at blurred streaks of advertisements and graffiti plastered on the tunnel walls. Walter had turned his head away when he thought that I was looking at him, tucking his hands in his pockets so I couldn’t dare extract one from its refuge. 

And I wouldn’t. It was a fault that I had even _thought _of touching his face in public, despite the blanketing darkness and apathetic stares from strangers. I was embarrassed now; I had embarrassed him, and he nudged against me every so often, probably trying to urge me to move away. Even if I could, there was a disgusting middle-aged couple groping each other in the aisle beside me and I wanted to stay as far away from them as possible. I focused on the reflections instead, able to perceive Walter’s face clearly reflected in the glass. He caught me looking and shut his eyes to lean his head against the pane, rocking with every bump and turn of the train.

Walter and I would not speak during this ride home; there was nothing special about it, nothing that gave us a reason to exchange words. This commute was like every other ride we have taken together. Because despite the crowds and the noise and the smells, we were the same now as we were when we boarded this afternoon. We did not care about anyone whose names we did not know and who did not know ours. We did not speak about what had passed between us, the development, the slow growth of this _something _which I still dared not give a generalizing label. Anyone that saw us, anyone bored enough to surmise who we were to each other probably thought that we were in a lovers’ spat.

I was not the woman who held onto her sweetheart for dear life, and I never would be. Walter was not the man who outwardly longed for the female form, panting hungry thoughts behind a girl’s back. And we were happy in this progression from friendship to this relationship which allowed subtle gazes and motions, or the rare, more explicit confessions we’ve experienced recently. And in the mornings, all would be forgiven and the progression would continue without us ever looking back for advice.

But I knew that this could not continue forever. I would test his limits soon, yet remain tactful despite the progress I had noted in him. I smiled every time I thought of the little pin he gave me and his racing heart against my chest. I wanted to start classes again just to attach it to my lapel and gloss my fingers over the little redhead during lunch.

He caught me smiling, raising his eyebrow in curiosity.

I leaned over close and whispered a warning in his ear, “You will be kissed tonight. Don’t flinch.”

He grunted, “I don’t.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the mix of revulsion and anticipation that creased the corners of his mouth. And just when I thought that his frown and distaste that traced his features would not subside, he relaxed and gave his full attention to the passing bland scenery out the window. Tugging his hat down to shield his eyes from possible noisy strangers, he withdrew a gloved hand from his coat, allowing me to entwine my fingers in his for the rest of the ride, concealed between our thighs.

When his stop was announced through the white noise of broken speakers, Walter motioned to stand.

Looking over at him I asked, “Should I-?”

He beckoned me off with a resolute nod, following close behind as I pushed through the people.

Feet from the gap, I reached back a blind hand, half-turning to make sure that a creep didn’t take it. Walter found me from among the families and lonely individuals and I pulled him up and out of the station, into frigid winter winds and the returned frozen rain.

Walter led a half-step in front of me, now the one pulling me along back to his apartment. The ice and snow crunched like broken bones beneath our feet, dry air and painful rainfall pelting our backs. 

We finally came to the building’s stoop and then inside his unit and I nearly fell through the doorway in the desire for warmth.

“_ God_, Walter. It’s fucking cold out! _ Jesus_. I’m sorry I ever suggested we leave,” I said, threading my fingers through my hair to fling down any snow that had stuck.

He shrugged, kicking off his shoes. “It’s okay. I didn’t mind.”

I laughed. “Well, maybe you just have a higher tolerance for the cold!” But I knew that it was not only the weather that he hadn’t minded, and I smiled at the notion.

The lights were still off and the room was eerily illuminated by only the street lamps and Christmas lights that donned the buildings around this place. It was silent, for the businessmen would have to return the next day to Wall Street and this weather was certainly a turnoff for many. I wondered for a moment as I looked at Walter if this was the first time he had spent this night with someone. I had an image of his mother in my head and couldn’t dare imagine that she ever gave him a gift. A small pang of guilt shuttered through my heart since I knew I could have been the first to give him something. And yet I also knew that he would not be comfortable with a gift exchange, thus I shrugged it off for now, thoughts wandering elsewhere.

We stood just within the doorway as Walter peeled off his coat and hung it with his hat on a rack. Reluctantly, I took off my things as well and he hung up my coat beside his. As I rubbed my hands together in warming friction, Walter turned back and clasped his now gloveless hands around mine and held tight.

His eyes were searching for something, finding permission in my speechlessness to lean forward and kiss my cheek with faltering lips. He did not immediately pull away; warm breath melted the chilled mark that quickly faded through the rest of my flesh.

I tried to capture his eyes again, but he bent his head down as was typical post-physical contact. After another moment, he said my name.

“What is it?” I asked, searching for any evidence of emotion around his eyes and cheeks.

A faint twitch flickered across his face and he was finally able to match my gaze, hesitantly planting another soft kiss on my slightly parted mouth. “Are you warm yet?” he asked.

My heart was pounding in my ears and my fingers twitched in his tight grip. “No….”

His eyes flared and he looked away again. He reminded me of the boys in school who were unsure how to respond to a girl on the playground that just handed him a daisy as a token of peace and friendship.

A half-step forward to close the distance between our bodies and I returned the kiss to his cheek, trailing my lips to his own. His hands fell to place reluctant fingertips on my waist which allowed me to wrap one of my own hands around the base of his neck, fingers threading through his hair, my other hand clutching the fabric of his rough vest. I kissed him like the first time I ever did so as a test, lingering for a moment before another attempt, awakening his senses after a night of persuasion.

He believed me now; I felt it in his tightening digits through the cloth of my shirt and I deeply desired to feel his fingers along bare skin. I felt it in the hot breath we exchanged between chapped lips, through the mixed sensations I received from my hands, fabric and flesh, holding tighter to a man who really could recover from a pit of bad experiences and uncertainty.

Growing more passionate by the moment, we broke for air in brief pauses in which we reconsidered our current state before returning to express these suppressed desires. Walter and I stood in contrast to those whose passions were only fueled by a base animal desire. Unspoken ‘thank you’s drove our movements and fueled our breaths, transmitted from fingertips to bodies like sparks of electricity from an outlet to an unsuspecting child.

A step back every few seconds, we sought a place to support our bodies, finally finding a bit of wall beside our hanging winter garments. Those were not even the thickest layer we had worn this night. A physical defense against frigid elements was nothing in comparison to the barriers that we were stripping now: the manifestation of the past couple months - talking, dining, _ being _ \- weakened day by day until it came to this point.

The cracked and peeling wallpaper itched my spine as I pulled Walter in tighter, restricting my own movement in case - _ In case of what? _

As my fingers trailed down the front of his faded vest, I asked, “May I?”

He pulled back just enough to look at me, brow furrowed over slightly narrowed eyes, interpreting my question. After a moment, he relaxed. A nod. He was the boy who modestly allowed his teachers to display his work on the walls outside the classroom, never once responding to the well-deserved praise.

The vest fell to the side. More gauche kisses, my fingers delicate on the buttons of his dress shirt. “Again?” I sighed.

Another hesitant nod with half-lidded downcast eyes. He was the boy that stood before the class, presenting something in which he secretly held pride but did not want to be teased as the nerd or teacher’s pet.

Slipping off the shirt to reveal a form I had only seen once before last night, I dared not say his name. We could not awaken from this. We could not be lifted from numb senses to the outside world as blood pumped in our ears and organs, fingers trembling in mute excitement.

My fingers traced down his biceps, his hands light on my sides, and I gently pushed down his arms. I slid a few fingers up under the hem of his undershirt at his hips and asked once more, softly, “Again?”

I gained his final nod of permission and slowly slid my palms against his flesh, over a hard abdomen, up his sides, indicating that he should raise his arms. He let me pull the shirt up and off, and he flung it down from his wrist, his eyes never meeting mine in the fear that this might all be real. Perhaps it was a dream; it was so ethereal, so unexpected.

He was the boy at the center of the gymnasium, told to perform a handstand and walk in a circle. He flips into perfect form, astounding his instructor and drawing cold jealousy from those around him. He is proud, flawless.

Calloused fingers from years of handling needle and thread traced my jawline, parting my already relaxed lips further. Walter replaced his fingers with his lips and gave another kiss, welcoming and accepting what we had become to each other. Friend, ally, confidante, one in whom pleasure was found, one in whom _peace _was found, a refuge, a retreat, an assistant to survival in this world. The word that I could not yet formulate was _lover_. That is not what this was, as much as my heart beat for him now.

His thumb and forefingers discovered the buttons of my own blouse. He fumbled, perhaps not quite sure if he wanted to pursue this torrid endeavor. I guided his hand down them all and he returned to my stomach, splaying his fingers softly under my ribcage, eyes not quite understanding what he was seeing or feeling. This was new to him; rough freckled skin contrasted my paler, softer form nicely. 

He pressed his other hand into the wall beside me as we continued to kiss and I clutched his waist above his pants line, tugging him as tight as I could to pin me back.

I could feel him growing tighter against me, his breathing labored and hot, sending a jolt up my spine and through my limbs. His lips found my neck, uncertain where to concentrate, and I strained, digging my nails into his hips. I suppressed the intense desire to exhale his name into the apartment air, but this was forbidden, for the walls might be able to tell a later dweller who was heard this night.

He took another moment to breathe but as I tried to capture his mouth again, he gritted his teeth, his fingers curling into my stomach, flexing and stretching with every inhale. With closed eyes, he pressed his forehead to mine, curling backward away from me.

“Can’t,” he managed to utter, removing the hand from my stomach and withdrew from me completely, taking a step back. He struggled to look at me squarely, shoving his hands into his pockets, eyes darted from me to the wall to the ghosts in the wallpaper. I didn’t move and as my breathing slowed he told me, “I’m sorry - I - last woman I saw, partially-dressed, with a man in the hall, was her. Saw it a lot. Too often for a child. And she yelled. Screamed that she ‘should have had that abortion.’

“Bad memory. It - it shouldn’t have come up now, I’m sorry,” he sighed. His gaze fluttered up and down, to my body and back to the floor.

I paused before answering, breathing in what he had just revealed. “Walter, you have nothing to be sorry for,” I reassured him, reaching out to caress his face. He leaned into my palm so slightly that it was really nothing more than a twitch. My heart was still pounding through my chest, my fingers weak as he took them down.

“Will you – stay here tonight?” he asked.

“Of course I will. As long as you want me to stay.”

His weak nod and the pain behind his empty gaze which was just filled moments before with wondrous passion nearly broke my heart. I pried myself away and stepped around him, his body turning to follow.

As I stepped onto the tile of the small kitchen area, re-buttoning my front, he muttered my name.

I turned as he pulled the undershirt back down and approached. I leaned back against the sink as the sudden desire to shed a few tears cast wrinkles along my brow and cheeks.

_ So this is what it feels like_.

I sighed and relaxed as he stood before me, resolute that I would not leave.

“Again. I – I want to try again,” he said.

“We don’t have to tonight.”

Perhaps he took this as my saying that I no longer wanted to, which was completely false. “I think you need time. There’s no rush,” I added.

“Maybe next week,” he said.

I smiled. “Maybe next week.”

He is the boy who sits at his desk with a blank piece of paper and a new pencil, thinking of who to invite to his birthday party. He writes one name, crumples the paper, and tries again.

* * *

We sat at the edge of his broken mattress on the floor, facing the blank shadowed wall feet away in the darkness. There was evidence that the wallpaper once displayed an intricate pattern, now faded and peeling. A single sheet lay atop the box spring with Walter’s makeshift comforter, an afghan, strewn at the foot. 

“Let’s talk,” I said.

“What about?”

“Tell me about your time at the School. I want to know.”

For the next few hours leading into midnight, we talked of various things in an effort to bury what had occurred prior. I was curious about his school life and learned that he had excelled in gymnastics and boxing – which explained his body – and in literature and religion.

“You might appreciate Lewis, then. _ Narnia _?” I asked.

“I did for a time. Required reading.”

“Any favorites during school?”

A light shrug. “_ Catcher in the Rye _.”

“How did you ever get your hands on that? It’s censored now and I probably couldn’t teach it even if I moved up to a high school around here.”

“Hurm. Browse through what I have some time,” he said, nodding back to a pile of paperbacks I just now noticed in the corner.

For the first time since having met Walter, we had a prolonged conversation about books and what I was thinking of giving my students, receiving Walter’s critiques on nearly all mentioned. I was impressed and suggested that perhaps he should visit one day during a class.

He grunted. “You probably do fine by yourself.”

“Even so… just think about it.”

I stretched and relaxed back on the mattress, with hands folded on my stomach. A coil poked up into my back, another in the base of my skull, rejecting my body, urging me to leave, now. 

I listened to his breathing as he sat with arms flung over knees. He peered back and down at me once, most likely curious as to what dared provoke me to lay out before him. After another moment, he turned back and hung his head between his knees.

I curled up and placed a light hand to his back between his shoulder blades. Firm muscles tensed at the contact, relaxing only when he turned his head and looked at me.

The same searching, curious, and pained eyes met me that I have now seen so many times. Confusion and wonder laced his expression, even as he closed the distance once more between us with a light and hopeful kiss.

“I want to try again,” he said.

I nodded and returned the kiss, gradually directing us down to our sides on the mattress. He needed to practice this step but held tightly and even accepted the placement of my leg over his hip.

He was quick to have reconsidered, perhaps able to suppress the memories, perhaps something else, and I welcomed that change in the knowledge that this time, there would be an ending. In a bumbling shuffle of shedding garments and repositioning, Walter was over me, head hung low as I shimmied out the rest of my clothing, leaving bra and underwear for him to frown upon. A hot flush painted his cheeks as he bent on all fours above me and I knew that in the light, his skin tone would probably match that of his hair. 

He continued to never meet my eyes as we moved, as I kissed him everywhere I could, even as I grimaced from the hard spirals in my back. This was easily ignored and in the thick prevailing darkness, now that the neighbors had shut off their lights and decorations, shadows bathed our partially nude forms.

Walter’s fumbling fingers yanked out his belt and tugged his pants to below his hips. I couldn’t look, even as I felt him atop me, as I wound my arms around his back and curled a leg half over his ass. Awkward and moist kisses broken by sharp intakes of breath occupied us as I ground up against his body. I probably would not last much longer, and try as he might to stop himself in the middle of this sordid act, Walter could not hold out, either.

I did not demand that he touch my undergarments. Unsnapping and slipping was my duty before I reached down a blind hand to free him and guide him to me. He grunted at the contact, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched, as if afraid to truly accept his own participation.

A brief curiosity passed through my mind. Did any girl in school ever ask him to dance? Was there ever once a girl or another woman who dared speak to the withdrawn figure in the back of a crowd? I knew that he never would have dared to touch a female before because they were all the same. Women were all filthy whores who cheated on their husbands with the pool boys when they had the house to themselves for seven hours of the day. They slathered on lotions to give their skin an oily texture and plastered on makeup to hide the impurities.

Despite the cold outdoors and the draft that snuck through the space in the windowpanes, we were sweating and my back revolted against the metal that scraped through the outer layer of the mattress and the thin sheet. Walter smelled of rich musk, his body slick against mine in his first hesitant press and I curled up my other leg. He concentrated on an area of my neck, eyes glazed over and forearms firm to either side of my head. We picked up a pulse as he thrust and I pushed back, creating a battle between our bodies with tensed muscles and increasing spasms.

For one moment he broke the barricade we had erected to protect us from the outside world and asked me a question, voice muffled into the mattress beside my ear.

“Is this - okay?”

I pushed his face to align with mine and muttered “Yes” into a deep kiss.

My mind turned blank from the heightened sensations and I was hypnotized by our increasing rhythm, gasping until I shuttered in my own release and he a few moments later. Lingering for another moment, I lowered my legs to the mattress and my hands to his hips and he slowly withdrew, an immediate mix of disdain, wonder, and confusion in his features. We stayed in this position, waiting for our breath and heartbeats to slow to a suitable level that I could say his name in a sharp exhale.

His eyes flashed up, mouth parted, aware of what we had just done and he cast his head to the side. If he was about to say something, he bit back the words that might have fallen from swollen lips. He didn’t move immediately, perhaps considering whether or not to speak. Instead, he crawled back, balancing on his haunches before he stood and padded off to the bathroom just feet away.

I lay with legs folded up, waiting for my senses to return, for the pounding blood to leave my ears, for my breasts to stop heaving with every breath. I waited, left to wonder how and why this happened. I heard the shower turn on which gave me time to wrap up the sheet we had just dirtied, splash myself in the kitchen sink, and at least find my undergarments and blouse.

All I wanted now was to sleep, to achieve my hope of his warm body at my side, silent and content. I held no fear of any terse words he may utter or sharp eyes to pierce the darkness. It was not his current absence that bothered me, as I stood to pour myself a glass of water on still-uncertain legs. It was the blank stare that I would receive upon his return into the room, what he would not say, what he would not reveal even after the smell of sex had dissipated into the walls.

I sat back down on the bed against the wall, huddled up tight within myself, and waited.


	12. Another Holiday, '63-'64

I must have dozed off for a while because Walter now crouched at my side in sleepwear with pajama bottoms clutched in a fist.

“Put these on,” he said. “All I have for you to – be comfortable.”

“Thank you.” 

I took them as I looked into absent eyes, curious as to what must have passed through his head while in the bathroom. After a moment in which his face portrayed nothing more than exhaustion, he stood back up and stepped over the mattress to settle at its edge. I turned my back to him to tug on the bottoms, taking my bra back off from under my blouse as well.

He must have been asking himself _ Why, How did this happen_, but more importantly, I imagined that he questioned the feelings that were now swelling in his breast. There was a fight occurring in his heart; all that he had never known about or felt towards women, because of a childhood of bad experiences, was breaking down. And as I turned back to sit and stare, Walter felt the twinge of every sharp bit of emotion that pierced his self, breaking veins, arteries, organs just to circulate through his body until it dissolved into his bloodstream.

I imagined then that he, the only child of a prostitute, of a mother that did not and could not ever love him, must have suffered just as badly at the hands of his mother’s men. They were no role models and only nurtured his hatred further. I did not blame Walter for not caring about his mother’s murder or for being so withdrawn and unemotional all these years. I did not blame him when he imagined her berating or beating him. _ ‘Bad memory,’ _he had said. But I rejoiced knowing that he was able to touch me, that he was able to recover for one night.

I was tempted to succumb to the natural desire to lie down and sleep, instead hesitantly reaching out to touch Walter’s curled clothed spine. I wanted nothing more than to simply _touch _him, to feel and know that his heartbeat was still there, to feel his breathing and his blood under my fingers and match my pulse to his.

He bolted up and snapped around in a single movement, clutching my wrist tight, not unlike the time I touched him in the shop. I did not dare to blink or pull back. His eyes were wide but hazy, faltering as he loosened his grip on my skin, leaving quickly fading red marks from his fingers.

“I’m – sorry. I don’t know – what to do now,” he whispered between his arms and knees.

I managed to catch his eyes, pale blue like the winter air that hugged this apartment tightly.

“Nothing,” I said, making another attempt to reach out to his shoulder. “We sleep.”

A light pat to his skin before retracting my hand back to myself. His eyes followed to my face, taking in my reassuring smile before I leaned in to steal an air-light kiss. There was such wonder and confusion in his expression that it would forever be imprinted in my mind. Curled in lips tasted what I left as if he never felt it before now. Wandering eyes, lost in the darkness that cloaked the walls and along the floor around this island we now clutched to so tightly. If we even dared to step off this mattress again before the sun rose, we might be swallowed whole by forces that begged ‘no, don’t.’

Walter responded by scooting down to the end of the mattress and retrieved the blanket, dropping it across our laps. I wanted to take him in a tight hug, to hold him still until he knew that there was a good possibility that all this would occur again.

Instead, I shook the blanket out flat and curled up tight on my side facing Walter, waiting a few moments until he stretched out as well. Laying on his back, there was not much room for both of us to fit but he tried his hardest not to make contact, arms curled behind his head with feet crossed. For just a moment, I unfurled from my half-fetal position to splay a hand across his chest, pushing myself up to capture his eyes as well as I could in the darkness. I don’t know what I was looking for, some hidden affirmation or consent, some reassurance perhaps that what we did was permissible and could be repeated. Maybe I should not have questioned him then, my imagination already wild with the thoughts of future encounters and peaceful nights like this. I may have been too much of a romantic, but so was he deep down, as evidenced by his previous motions and initiations.

_ ‘Again. I – I want to try again,’ _ he had said.

I didn’t have to say anything for him to pull me down with one delicate hand against my back. My cheek pressed to his chest and arm draped around to his side while I felt the rise and fall of every slowing breath was something I had hoped for since first realizing my feelings for the tailor. 

He whispered my name.

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For talking to me.”

We stayed just so until I felt myself drifting to sleep, rolling to my other side and he away on his. We both lay tight within ourselves, listening to the sound of each others’ breaths against the occasional police siren and dog bark until at some point we left this tangible dream and slept.

* * *

There was light pressure against me when my eyes fluttered open to drifts of sunlight across the floor. An arm across my stomach, the tingle of hair to my shoulder, and warm breath down my side creased an endearing smile across my face. I was astonished that he may have reached for me in my sleep, that he may have dreamed of something serene, a reflection of thoughts left unsaid or those that he refused to complete with a fairy-tale ending.

Upon awakening, he snapped back, disoriented, and looked down with the eyes of a man just risen from a ten-year coma. A weak smile traced his lips but quickly dissipated as if he felt he had done something wrong. _ No, nothing was wrong, _ I wanted to say. _ This is okay, this is normal. Smile again. I like it when you smile _.

“I – need to work.”

I nodded, saying that I would return home as well.

We dressed in a heavy silence, the memories flooding back, thick with emotion and hesitant awkward movements. His fingers trembled along buttons, fumbling with cufflinks. I noticed that I had never seen Walter in a tie and was curious if he even owned one.

I watched him finish dressing and as he tugged his scarf tight, flexing his hands in leather gloves, I asked, “No time for breakfast?”

Dust drifted with the light through the small kitchen area to the door where he now stood. Looking back towards me only feet away, Walter shook his head and beckoned for me to follow him out for the subway ride to my home and he to the shop.

With a hand on the doorknob, he said my name. “I hope - I hope I didn’t disappoint you.”

He was just about to turn his grip when I pulled his hand away and held it between us. His gaze was elsewhere, perhaps lost in yesterday’s late hours, but his eyes were directed at my hands.

“Not even in the slightest,” I said.

It felt strange to finally leave that morning, to leave everything behind in his ratty low-rent apartment. The walls would hold tight to the sights and sounds and smells, threatening to destroy them if I did not return.

* * *

It was not until six nights later, New Year’s Eve, that I saw Walter. There were no brief visits at the shop or at either of our homes. I was busy with lesson plans and it was utterly freezing out. He called once to tell me he didn’t have any time to see me that week.

“A lot to do. New Year’s orders. I have to finish everything.”

I figured the phone call was more an act of politeness than anything, an indirect way to say he needed to be alone.

“That’s okay. You’d be too worn out, don’t worry about it…. Do you – let me take you out for dinner somewhere.”

Silence, soft breathing through the line.

“Walter?”

“When?” 

“Tuesday. Before the New Year’s rush.”

“…Okay. I’ll – stop by when I’m done.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

There was silence again but he hadn’t hung up. “Walter?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, faint.

“For what?” I asked.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t… I don’t want you to think that I don’t want to see you. After the other night. I… I don’t know what comes next. But...I’m not going to disappear like them -

(His mother’s men. Other men. Love ‘em and leave ‘em men)

“- Wouldn’t do that to you. Need you to know that. I look forward to dinner. Goodbye.” Click and dial tone.

His last words sent a shudder through my fingers to the phone and I nearly dropped the receiver back on its cradle as I knelt on the floor in front of the rotary. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe as I felt the heavy fabric of Walter’s coat, the cotton, the smooth buttons of his shirt, his flesh under my fingertips and over my lips. Sensory memories flooded through my head and my limbs, his voice clear and soft in my thoughts. And as I sat on the cold tile, observing how much dust and grime had collected at the crux of the wall and the floor, I realized something.

I was in love with this man and could do little about it. 

He was no fool. He was not every male in this disgusting city who sought to please and receive reciprocation from his seducer. Instead, Walter was trapped in his memories from which I hoped to free him, at least long enough to enjoy our time together, and maybe, hopefully, do _that _again.

And it was not so much painful as frustrating to not see him during those few days, but it was healthiest for both of us, to clear our minds, rearrange reactions and prepare for Walter’s arrival in a few days. This felt child-like, immature, but pure and unabashed. I was eager to see him again to dare to take a gloved hand in mine and lead him someplace in the shadows where we could hide and exchange tentative kisses.

When he finally did knock on my door at nine PM Tuesday night, I scrambled up from the kitchen table where I had been waiting in my winter wear.

Walter greeted me with a small nod. “I – I’m sorry if I’m late,” he said, begging for forgiveness.

“No, not at all,” I said, locking my doors behind me. As I went down the steps behind Walter to the icy sidewalk, I grabbed his arm and said his name. _Wait a moment. _

He paused and bowed his head once I was at his side. We walked slightly quicker than his normal pace but I kept up and asked, “How have you been?”

He didn’t look at me when he spoke. “Okay. Tired recently. I’ve had a lot of work. The same work.”

“I should have stopped by. Coffee, lunch, anything.”

He shook his head. “No time.”

“You should really take a day off to rest.”

“Maybe.”

I did not expect him to meet my eyes - this was normal now. I knew his habits, his mode of conversation, his way of interacting with me and I did not mind any of it because none of it was necessary for me to understand. And yet, I went against my better judgment.

“Are – are you okay? Generally? I mean –”

“Yes.”

I withdrew, saying, “Are you-”

He snapped my name. _E__nough_. And then correcting himself, he asked, “Can I stay with you tonight?”

I nearly gawked at the question, shocked but pleased that at the request. “Of course. Of course, you can. But you need to take the bed. You’re exhausted and it’s much better than the sofa.”

His slightly widened eyes replied with a thin smile between his scarf and the shadow of his hat.

Sex can change a lot of things in a relationship, but I still insisted on calling this something _ ‘something.’ _ I would be comfortable in the most casual relationship with Walter because I could never ask him to become someone he was not. His passion came without a forewarning; from the deepest corner of his heart, there had been growing this inclination to express that which he had no words for. This was a man whose unexpected delving into something so physically intimate was a break from the only reality he had ever known and once he stepped through that barrier he would never retreat. He was not a man of regrets, albeit it may have seemed like that as we walked apart towards a diner I had previously chosen.

Unlike the first time we ate together in public, Walter attempted conversation and told me about new machines on hold and new fabrics that were being created. His soft-spoken enthusiasm was not entirely feigned, drifting back and forth through a monotone, the rise and pitch of his voice hypnotizing. As he spoke, he waved a hand in small gestures, illustrating patterns in the air of requested designs. 

I think tonight was the first time I ever heard him laugh, a chuckle, as a little boy urged his single father to give him his box of crayons. After many non-persuasive ‘no’s, the father consented and the boy scribbled on napkins, many of which he then tossed on the floor after cruel destruction at the hands of the rainbow.

I caught Walter’s eyes as he looked back from their interaction a few booths down but he shied away to finish his meal.

I had a recurring urge to feel his blood under my fingers, to ensure myself that he would not turn into some used warehouse mannequin, which is why I could not peel my eyes away tonight. I wanted to _see _his blood pumping since I dared not reach over the table to lay a hand on his face.

Suddenly I was distracted when the boy asked his father if they would see fireworks. The man was not sure, they had to go to the mother. The mother might not like it, she might want to be with her son tonight. The boy was saddened by this news.

“You don’t want to do anything tonight, do you?” I asked Walter.

“Hmm? I – don’t care.”

“Neither do I. I – haven’t really celebrated holidays in years.” _ Christmas was nice, though_, I thought.

“Why?”

“No one around.”

“I see.”

“Plus, I never really understood New Year’s. It just means we’re all getting older. Same thing with birthdays, you know? And I just realized that I don’t know yours.”

“Twenty-first of March.”

“Of forty?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought so.” I was sure that one day I would know the smaller details about him but there was nothing that was important right now to keep _ this _ going.

“Same?” he asked.

“Hm?”

“Nineteen forty.”

I nodded. “One of the youngest in the school right now other than the kids. I’m surrounded… by these older women, they remind me of nuns. I don’t like taking the ruler to students. But some people still do.”

“Shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Trust me, I know. They’re just _kids_. They don’t know better.”

He nodded, taking the last bite of a French fry. “Do you go back Thursday?” he asked.

“I do. I’m guessing you will, too?”

A nod. “Tomorrow. Will you – still have jobs for me? Anything else to mend?”

“Well, yeah, maybe. But it was getting expensive and I don’t want to burden you.”

“It’s my job. I can give you a discount, though. To ensure your continuing business.”

I chuckled. “Half-off?”

“It can be arranged.” He smiled again, this one fading slower into slightly parted lips like he was thinking of something else to say.

We paid the check and left. Halfway back to the apartment, I halted on the sidewalk. After a few steps, he realized I had paused and said my name.

Perhaps I was nervous, not sure what most people do after having sex for the first time. What comes next? I was just as confused as him; heaven knows I wanted him back in my bed, but another date might be preferable.

“I know you said you didn’t want to do anything tonight, but it’s not even midnight. How do you feel about a movie?”

A few seconds passed of consideration.

“It’s something different,” I added.

This little persuasion was enough for him to follow me to the local cinema. 

As I asked for two to “Charade,” Walter shuffled a few feet away to look at movie posters. The woman that handed over the tickets asked what I was doing here, it was horrible enough the theater was open and people actually had to _work. _ I shrugged, emphatically telling her that we would celebrate afterward. She threw both of us the do-whatever-you-want-just-not-in front-of-me look as I nodded and smiled and turned away.

I noticed that Walter was actually _reading _some of the posters and I suddenly wondered if his mother ever let him see movies as a child, if he ever went out on field-trips while at the Home.

I asked him.

“Charlton’s took groups. I never went. Wasn’t really interested.”

“Then I’m glad you agreed to this.”

We entered the dark theater which was empty except for only one other couple near the front. Walter settled in a corner at the rear so he could rest against the wall and I scooted in beside him. Even in this pitch darkness, I would not dare to touch him or even rest my head on his shoulder out of respect for his fear of being caught.

About halfway through the movie after Hepburn discovers that Grant is a phony, Walter was asleep, his head lolled to his shoulder. I smiled and let him be, but curious if he would be able to sleep tonight. He was probably an insomniac. I thought of how he asked if he could stay with me tonight, what that signified, if he was admitting that he was lonely, if he was admitting that he missed me. Maybe he simply didn’t like his own building. By now I knew that Walter was not the type to use spoken words; another memory suddenly panged in my head: his journal. Was that always on his person, in an inner coat pocket?

He was fortunate enough not to view the male of the couple a few rows up copping feels of his girl, both of whom looked to be high schoolers and were obviously not appreciators of Audrey Hepburn.

Walter only reawoke with arms crossed tight, huddling down in the seat, during Grant’s fight scene on the roof. He stayed conscious for the rest of the film, mostly keeping his eyes open for the thriller scenes. I looked at him from time to time to see how he was faring and rubbed his arm when the film ended.

“Let’s get out of here. It’s probably just about midnight,” I said.

Entering into a street with New Years’ stragglers, a few fireworks already blazing overhead, and a couple bums stumbling from their alleyways, Walter and I promptly returned to my apartment. I had decided that I wanted to go to sleep and told him that it was all right if he followed me upstairs.

In silence, he obeyed until we came to my room and I rummaged through my drawers for sleepwear. Up until this point, I had been oblivious to Walter’s confused eyes and firm stance in the doorway. When I turned back to approach him, I was thoroughly embarrassed, sighing and taking a step closer to him as I spoke.

“Oh. God. I am … so sorry. I thought this would be okay. When I said that you would be sleeping up here, I meant that I would be, too. But I honestly only meant this as a gesture that you should be comfortable,” I trailed off nervously.

With widened eyes, I swallowed, tightening my grip on the wad of heavy cotton in my hands. Walter continued to stand still, casting his gaze around the room, back to me, back to the floor in a sweep of his surroundings, considering what to do or say next. The bed behind me was a queen, enough for two slender people to be able not to make contact if careful. Dangerously, I had assumed too much, perhaps conveying the wrong message; therefore, while saddened, I would not be surprised if he turned to leave like the times when we had first started talking.

“Walter, I - I want this to be okay.”

By ‘this’ I meant all of it, everything we were to each other plus the intimacy.

And finally, he said, “It’s okay. Can I – borrow a toothbrush?”

“Of course. Yeah, there’s a new one in the cabinet.”

As he turned away and I changed, yawning for the first time tonight, I wondered if this would become our new routine, a replacement to my days coming and going from the shop with clothes and food. It was unlikely, just another romantic thought that surfaced in my head. After today, we would return to work and things would be as they were before what occurred only last week. I knew this, but my uncertainty lay in Walter’s reactions which were anything but negative and disappointing. He had proven to be a host of at least a few surprises and had taken another step in actually _asking _to stay the night and I concluded that there _was no conclusion_. As I came to believe before, we did these things because we _wanted _to and never needed to provide an explanation because there might not be one. Walter was here with me tonight as a friend although I was ashamed to admit that deep down I sincerely hoped for something greater.

Taking turns in the bathroom, I returned to see Walter sitting on the side of the bed, hands laying in his lap where he had given up unbuttoning his shirt. Cautiously, I sat beside him and curled my fingers around his own; he did not turn his head or peer at me from the corner of his vision, but his hand twitched and I softly whispered his name. “What are you thinking?”

“I – uh – I’ve never – no one before you. Friends with only a few girls in school. The few that were there. Tomboys. People only liked me, the instructors only liked me, because I could hold a conversation about academics.” He looked over at me and I smiled faintly. “Always preferred writing, though. Easier than speaking.”

As I waited for him to add more in the following few moments of silence, I huddled up with my other arm wrapped around my legs and reached up to brush my fingers across his cheek because I had nothing to say. He wasn’t seeking comfort in this confession because I would not judge or lay penance for things he never even did wrong.

“Do you remember the boys I mentioned? When I was young?”

“I do.”

“I don’t regret it.”

“Why did you do it?”

He shrugged. “Said some nasty things.”

“Don’t regret anything, do you,” I said, an assumption more than a rhetorical question which he answered anyway with a soft “No.”

“Good,” I said.

“I – I don’t-,” he swallowed his words, glancing sideways to me for a moment before back at his now fisted hands in his lap. “Not this, either.”

Stretching my legs back off the bed and applying soft fingertips to his jawline, I said, “I’m glad.”

He gave me another brief smile before he looked at me properly, his eyes filled with the same faint glow as every time he looked at me when I jumped out of a subway car, content that he would see me again soon. Tonight, he was silent. And as he finished stripping out of his shirt to roll up and drop on the floor with the dark faded vest, I decided to turn off the ceiling light and move back to the other side of the bed. I leaned back against the heavy wooden headboard, pulling my sheets and comforter to my waist. When Walter looked back, he still held an air of uncertainty and confusion, if he should lay on top of or within the layers, closer to me or at his edge. He compromised by coming to sit flush against me and in the darkness as my eyes were just getting adjusted, I gripped his shoulder and kissed his cheek. I placed another softer one upon his lips, and then laid down on my side facing away from him, my body aching to be enveloped.

Walter would not sleep; whether it was a bout of insomnia or nerves, he tried his hardest not to disturb me long after he believed I slept. I drifted in and out for about an hour or so, my heartbeat unable to slow as a finger brushed away strands of hair that had fallen over my neck. I was only conscious until shortly after I felt him rise and creek open my bedroom door.


	13. One in Whom Peace is Found, Jan '64

He was gone. I awoke at six to wash and dress and then descended downstairs, expecting Walter to be sitting at the table or on the sofa. I said his name as my foot hit the bottom step and I looked to my right. Empty kitchen. Entering the open space, I was the only one there. I cursed under my breath and immediately wondered if something was wrong.

“Goddamit, Walter… Why,” I sighed.

A note … anything? Nothing. He had waited for me to fall asleep and then _left _when he could have very well slept on the sofa as he has done previously.

Still sleepy, I assembled a sandwich for lunch and departed for a teacher workday at the school.

After four hours in my empty classroom, I made one last check of homework and tests to hand back and ran through my lesson plans for the coming weeks. This would be my first experience with my own students returning from their Christmas break so of course the assignment had to be ‘What I did over break.’ Gold stars to everyone, time for recess. Too cold? Too bad. Mommy should have given you a thicker scarf.

I should have gotten them presents.

The silence of the room was stifling, and I was bitter; my thoughts and whispers reverberated off the walls with utterances of ‘Walter’ and ‘God’ and ‘Tell me.’ My hands were shaking weakly and I was finally unable to concentrate as Walter’s words drifted through my head.

“Don’t ask to stay over if you’re just going to leave,” I seethed.

I may have been unnecessarily angry, but as I adjusted my blouse and the collar, I sighed at having forgotten to wear the little pin today. Even if no one saw it, I should have put it on - the little redhead with his books. My mind would have been calmer today if I had worn the little schoolboy.

I took a coffee break in the small teacher’s lounge with plans to return to my room for a late lunch. Too preoccupied to watch where I was going, I bumped into the man Walter had thrown against a fire hydrant in the doorway.

_ Oh damn. _

I tried to move around him. “I’m sorry - I-”

“That bastard’s here.”

I stopped and gawked at him. “What?”

“You heard me. The tailor. Passed him a few minutes ago in the front office.”

If I muttered another ‘what’ I’d be labeled a fool before the couple other teachers wasting time in the lounge smoking, reading, staring. One word escaped anyway and the man rolled his eyes, brushing past me into the hallway, leaving me speechless, confused, wondering if I really needed that serving of caffeine.

Turning on my heel back into the hallway, I darted to the closest water fountain, took one large gulp and wiped my lips. How did he even know this was the school? I never said anything, I never said what grade I taught.

The bagel.

The day those rioters were out and he offered me a bagel before leaving me at the school.

That damn bagel.

I strode to the front office in a drop of heavy footfalls, only in a slight rush now to face Walter.

The frosted glass obscured any hint of a view I may have needed before opening the door labeled OFFICE in bold black painted letters. A corner of the O was chipped and I scratched a nail against it before I decided I should actually _open _the door.

Walter was the first being I saw, a shot of red hair over brown collar and hat on the floor to his side. He sat off to the left, head hung and hands clasped between his legs. He looked over at my entrance, retrieved his hat, and stood, taking a step forward.

The old woman at the front desk with glasses chained around her neck and permed white hair greeted me with beaming dentures. “Oh! Is this your guest? We called down but you weren’t there.”

“I - yes,” I said, catching a deeply ashamed and apologetic gaze from Walter in the corner of my eye. “Thank you,” I said back at the woman, beckoning Walter to come with a throw of my head. 

He followed a few steps behind me on the way back to my classroom, passing only two other faculty members. I shut and locked the door, turning back to look at him pacing past my desk.

“Why did you leave?” I asked. 

I immediately regretted any accusation when Walter sighed and looked away. “I can’t tell you that.”

“What does that mean?” 

“Didn’t want to sleep there. Felt...strange. I stayed until I knew you were asleep.”

“You could have just gone downstairs.”

“I couldn’t…. I - wouldn’t have been able to control myself. Would have been bad.”

“Walter, I don’t understand,” I said. After another second, it clicked. Loss of control. “Does this have to do with beating those boys? Of beating the men in front of me? This is so different! Those situations, they’re - they were a loss of self-control from a fit of anger, vengeance, rage. If you’re talking about a loss of self-control, of...with me…. That’s different. That’s not bad. It can be quite good, actually. Losing control with a person you care for, and, I’m fairly certain you care for me, as long as it’s positive, it’s consensual, you know, especially to be...intimate...it’s okay. Whatever you want to do, you should _do_. I - I want you to. ” There it was, the admission.

“I did,” he urged. “You needed to sleep. I couldn’t disturb you. You’re right, I could have stayed downstairs. But I needed to think. I’m sorry. Wanted you to know that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I finally stepped away from the door and approached him next to my desk. “I would invite you back tonight, but classes will be starting and -”

He shook his head, a refusal that said, _ ‘No, really, this time I insist.’ _ “I’m busy as well. Belated holiday orders. I need to get back.”

I halted him with a firm hand to his chest and hesitated before planting a light kiss to his lips. “Thank you… I’m glad you came by.”

“Goodbye,” he said, clearing his throat. He passed around me to the door.

“Can you figure the way out?” I asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Okay,” I said and turned back to my desk as he clicked the heavy door shut behind him.

It took me a while staring at my desk to realize, but his interpretation of respect and consideration of the night continued to enlighten me to his true nature. It was warped, tainted. I wanted to be angry out of selfishness, but it faded away. He had not yet separated self-control into categories: the good and the bad. Losing control in the face of danger or potential harm was an instinct of self-preservation but feeling on the verge of losing control in a bed at night could only be beneficial to solidifying what _this _was. And yet for some reason, he felt that if he had pursued that form of expression in the most positive way possible, it might have hurt one of us, might have hindered something else, might have fueled lingering doubts in clouded minds. His clouded mind.

I didn’t blame him. I knew what it was that he could not say, that he had been unable to say. I was certain but whose turn was it? I had lost track. I felt like this was a game now; who would make the next daring move and there was only one move left.

I stopped my mind from feeding me lies and hopes of love and comfort. I hoped that another revelation would arise from the mists of his eyes the next time we saw each other.

* * *

To my shock, he came to my front door at a quarter to eleven that night, saying only my name before leaning in for a tender kiss with fingertips to my neck as if checking for a pulse. Immediately he motioned to turn away and I reached for his arm.

“What are you doing here?”

“Passed by.”

“Don’t feed me that…. I said you can stay whenever you want.”

“Didn’t bring anything.”

“Tomorrow night.”

“You wake early.”

“So do you.”

He nodded and turned away before I could utter another word, passing back onto the sidewalk like a fleeting apparition, evaporating into the misty dark rain. I was left to wonder if he had pondered my words in the classroom earlier and found no answer.

* * *

Letting him in at 11:39 the following night with a warm smile and a half-empty mug of coffee, he responded only with another addictive kiss the moment he wiped off his shoes. Creaking leather fingers stuck to the equally cold skin of my face before he withdrew with doubts and shadowed eyes.

As he peeled the gloves from his hands and I sat my mug back on the counter, I said, “I’m glad you stopped by last night.”

“You wanted me to stay.”

“I - yes, but, you’re here now.”

Peering over at me as he shrugged off his coat, he muttered, choosing his words carefully, “I’ll try again. I thought about what you said to me, about losing control. I know you’re right. You’re right when you said I cared for you.” He cleared his throat, staring at his shoes and removed them to place under his things against the wall. “But I don’t know how.”

“Come,” I said, offering a hand. “One thing at a time.” He did not take it but followed me up the short flight of stairs to my bedroom. The journey up was tense as I wondered what could have been going through his head these past few nights. I did not foresee any of this, any of his words or faltering actions, his second guesses laced with a projected truth of our relationship. I did not foresee his arrival at the school nor his audacity to appear in public and request for me, risking rumors that I, not he, would have to quell.

“How bad is your insomnia?” I asked once inside the room. Walter still stood in the doorway.

“Can’t sleep until four. Sometimes six. Why I couldn’t stay here the other night.”

“You already said you wouldn’t have been able to control yourself.”

A soft blush. Anger or shame?

“I didn’t want to be impulsive.”

I stepped up to him, taking his hands in mine. “I know. But maybe, maybe that’s something we can figure out. When it’s okay. Impulses aren’t always bad.” I simply wanted him to be honest with himself and his perceptions. 

He was silent for a few moments as a soft smile and downcast eyes revealed deep gratefulness. I didn’t know how long my words would stay in his mind, but I hoped they would resound clearly when we spent time together. There may have been something else hidden beneath his skin, but I could have been searching too hard, too hopeful, deluding myself every time his heart clicked on and he looked at me reassuringly. My mind was clouded with unsaid words collecting dust, waiting to gleam under a spotlight full and proud. But for now, as we stripped with backs to each other and tight breaths in our chests, I was comfortable.

He asked for me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I should sleep downstairs this time.”

“Not tonight.” I had to be stubborn now. “One of the reasons you probably can’t sleep is because you’re not comfortable. Your mattress is horrible and that sofa isn’t exactly new. You won’t disturb me. Honestly, I - I’ll probably sleep better with you here. Will you try?”

My sternness and his apathy hung in the air, unsure whether a clash would produce any lasting resolve. However, as I stood in the thick flannel and bare legs, I became starkly aware of the chilly air that drifted through a crack in my window panes and I shivered. Turning to the bed without waiting for a response, I curled up tight with the comforter under my neck.

“You’re sleeping here, Walter. Now get in; there’s enough room. You can go downstairs after I fall asleep,” I said, my voice stifled against heavy coverings.

_ Just get in. I don’t want anything tonight. Just be here. Get in. Please. _

In silence, he slipped under deep as well. This was our hiding place where not even the city lights could penetrate and discover two huddled forms hidden from eyes and ears.

“I don’t like this,” he grumbled.

“You have to do it to get used to it.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how it works. And because I want you here.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“Yes, it is. It’s a good reason. I want you here.” Calming myself, I added, “I just … I just want you next to me.”

“Why?”

“Why do you keep asking that?” I flipped to my other side to face him as well as I could in the pitch darkness under the covers. “Why do you find it so hard to believe that I want to be close to you?”

Walter crossed his arms tight in protection from my potential touch and harsh words. The barrier immediately broke when I snaked a tentative hand to his bicep and in a single swift movement, nails dug into my arm and tugged me closer, our upper bodies temporarily revealed to the shadowed room. Deep eyes reflected the little bit of luminescence in the room, examining my new position. He relinquished and I laid on my side to look at him.

After a good minute in which physical arrangements were made, he curled around my back protectively with light fingers to my stomach and whispered, “I’ll try. I do...want to get used to this. Just until you fall asleep. Each time when I visit like this.”

I kissed his palm. “Thank you.”

This first day back with a class had been taxing and I was finally calmed now that I had his warm body enveloping me whole. The selfishness that arose tonight came from a childish fear of being alone and yet he was experiencing just as much peace as myself in the notion of reciprocal security. This would change with every kiss or touch and regress every time he lay in my bed, a cycle of heated and calmed hearts, passionate and passive gazes. 

I only carried one dire hope tonight.

“May each time be a surprise.”


	14. In the Face of Humanity, Mar '64

After the night that I urged Walter to sleep in the same bed with me, he must have realized that some other human being actually wanted him in her life and that this was no folly. He was stuck with me and would find no easy way out without a fight. All along he had believed what I told him, what I felt for him, and what he felt in return despite the difficulty it had taken to overcome those internalized walls and hatred for the female sex. When I said that he would not bother me with his insomnia, I was right; I could fall asleep moments after being awoken in the middle of the night as he descended to the ground floor and again upon his return to the bed hours later. His changes of mind settled into a single pattern until he reasoned out within himself what he was and was not comfortable with, what he dared to do, to say, gradually not holding back, finally, _ finally _knowing that my feelings for him would not waver.

Walter left work in the small shop to transfer to a larger garment factory, claiming that he had begun to feel too claustrophobic when his boss was around. Maybe he had been fired, maybe he had had one last scuffle before being thrown out like every other menial worker. He said he wanted a larger workspace, the silence when by himself was driving him mad, the factory was closer to his home…. Whatever his matter, he gained more hours and more pay, able to save up for his next apartment come May and the rare times he treated me to dinner.

The place where he worked was a large and stench-ridden brick building with too many roaches; the faulty track lighting and high-positioned windows that let down bright streams of sunlight only at high noon gave no boost to the workers’ morale and elicited several wide-mouthed yawns during the day. If I ever saw Walter before he had a chance to bathe, I experienced the reek of dyes, coworkers, and stale sweat; the factory was not well ventilated and everyone worked in close proximity to the next seamstress or furrier or stitcher. There were at least two people of any subgroup of the “garment-worker” profession there and I found it fascinating to pass by the men and women hunched over machines and needles, meticulously fastening buttons and hemming fabrics to create what would later be shipped out by the crate-full.

I had no reason to submit any more mending requests; my funds had run low and none of the other staff offered to assist, so all I could afford was the occasional meal for two. I still dared to visit during his brief lunch breaks on weekends where we hid behind his station on wooden stools and ate and spoke about the day, exchanging bits of frustration softened with honest eyes and understanding nods. An obnoxious coworker strode past every so often, making obscene comments and if the supervisor was not around, Walter would threaten the man with a hard punch to the nose. “Pigs,” he would huff back.

“Maybe I shouldn’t come anymore,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it.”

But another day, the gaggle of gossiping skirts left for lunch with cringes and piercing eyes as they passed Walter and I.

“Who is she?” I heard them say.

“Why is she visiting _ him _?”

That night he suggested that I stop visiting on the weekends; it might be better to come at the end of his shift. “Obnoxious. Don’t like them. You shouldn’t have put up with that just for me.”

Shaking my head adamantly, I refused on the basis that he shouldn’t let them irritate him; they were just more stupid women and ignoring them would get them to shut up eventually. Same with the few men that looked at me with haughty mouths and lecherous gazes. “There will always be people like them. You know that. Ignore it. Can’t go around smashing heads into machinery in broad daylight whenever you want, Walter.”

He settled on this but requested that the weekend lunches be the only time I make an appearance instead of also waiting for him in the cold as I had done a couple times before. _ Doesn’t want anyone thinking we’re too close. We still have to be careful… _ It was simpler this way.

Over the course of a couple months, I asked more than once for Walter to stop by the school again, just to say hello, to sit in the back of the classroom as a guest; more than once he refused and I stopped asking. In a desire for company, Walter visited my apartment once a week after a long day, three times during the bouts of nasty weather, for a meal and rest as I worked in the dark on papers and projects. The hesitations he had expressed early ceased as I had demanded of him and we fell into casual and rare displays of affection which lacked anything more physically intimate than a tight embrace. (I dared not act as anything more than a sister when visiting in the factory.) And it was not that the desire for sex didn’t exist, masked behind our placid facades, but that it was unnecessary during our times together. Whatever concerns he had about losing control and intimacy must have been pacified given the return to celibacy. As we settled into this new routine, time seemed to slow and repeat in a cycle. One night over, two days apart, one day lunch, three days apart with minor variations.

Unlike our Christmas holiday, Valentine’s was nothing special. It passed like any other, no exchange of chocolates or kisses, no flowers, not even the wilted rose that I imagined Walter placing in my mail slot. I helped to chaperone the sixth-grade dance for a few hours after school and Walter was working overtime finishing up orders for evening restaurant patrons. The pin on my collar was my date that night and we dined on two-day-old leftovers with a lopsided candle on the kitchen floor.

On the evening of March twelfth, four months since this _something _had begun, Walter agreed to meet me in the Park for a night of pure company. He found me in the shadow cast by a lamppost and we walked until settling within sight of one of the many bridges. It was still cold out, a brisk breeze swept through debris on sidewalks as we sat on a bench in the shadows enveloped tightly within ourselves, my head lightly on his shoulder.

“Tomorrow night - stop by and I’ll make something,” I said.

“Okay. You’ll be alright?”

“Yeah, little tired is all. I’m sorry I’ve … gotten into the habit this past week of not seeing you. Parent-teacher conferences. It’s just frustrating with some of them.”

“It’s okay.”

It was okay because we were not the couple that had to hear each other’s voices every moment of every day, incessantly calling or dropping by or going out on public dates. Although his visits continued to be a surprise, never at the same time of day, never lasting the same amount of time, never promising a conversation, and always dependent upon Walter’s mood, they were important and a relief from daily stresses.

This hour in the Park was enough to hold us over until the following evening when I made a casserole and we shared a pitcher of tap water.

“This is amazing, thank you,” he muttered post-forkful.

“No problem, sweetheart.”

… _ Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. _

He stopped mid-bite with wide eyes and lowered his utensil from his mouth.

I sighed, pinched my eyes shut, and thoroughly shook my head in an effort to dismiss my mistake. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. That, uh, that slipped out and I won’t do it again. I don’t know where that came from, it was foolish. I'm sorry. I'm uh - I'm glad you like the food, Walter. You can take home the leftovers tomorrow if you want.”

“I will,” he said softly, still in amazement that I dared let a term of endearment slip out. I usually called him something in my head, something so sweet his face would burst from cringing if I said them aloud. ‘Dear’, ‘honey’, ‘sweetie’, ‘snookiepie’ - it made me laugh to say those words to myself while looking at a blank and stoic face.

He said my name.

“Nothing…. This really did turn out well. I’ll do it again sometime.” Stuffing another bite, I bit back a smile and looked away. We finished in continued silence until I picked up the plates and Walter volunteered to help with the dishes.

“I - okay. Okay, you can dry. Here.” I tossed a rag at his chest.

Growing more tired by the moment as we digested and cleaned in silence, I considered not going into the factory tomorrow. Perhaps Walter could use a break from the jeers and stupid remarks; honestly, I was surprised he ever allowed me to visit him in the first place, hesitant as he was to be with me in public. But when he asked for my permission to make himself lunch with the food in my refrigerator, I couldn’t refuse. I wondered if that let me off the hook, if I could stay home for the day.

“Walter?” _ Tread lightly. These are shallow waters_. “Is there ever a day that you rather I leave you alone?”

“Do you mean at the factory?” He shook his head, mouth slightly parted and eyes playing across my face. He was absently running the cloth over the edge of a glass. “You don’t want to come anymore?”

“No! I do. I’ll keep coming.”

“You said they didn’t bother you.”

“No, no, that’s not-”

Softer, he said, “I want to see you.”

No excuses. I nodded, noting a flicker behind his eyes that would have to kindle until this chore was complete.

Once we were done with the dishes and Walter tossed his completed sandwich back into the refrigerator until the morning, I returned to the table to grade a couple papers and provide myself with a free weekend. Instead of retreating into the living space as usual, Walter reached with a calloused forefinger to touch the nape of my neck as he stood behind me. Goosebumps flooded over my entire body, fine hairs pricked up and my breath caught in my chest. I shut my eyes as he applied a second finger, trailing them down and up until my flesh tingled only where he touched; like car tires that gradually wore down unpaved back roads, they burned alongside the top of my spine. His fingers broke into full hands at my shoulders and squeezed once, twice, a beginner’s massage. On a second thought, he lifted his hands away, as if peeling his flesh from moist clay. He motioned to step away after brief contemplation but I stopped him with an utterance of his name.

He turned back with half-lidded and tired eyes as I stood and placed a chaste kiss upon his lips. Something more passionate gradually ensued in which we stumbled back and smothered ourselves in the shabby cushions of the sofa, breathing in rhythm with police sirens and barking dogs and overturned rolling trashcans as hands held tight above heads on the sharp armrest, imprinting a firm red line and blotchy patterns on the backs of my forearms.

I was clutching the fabric of his vest along his waist when he broke away, adjusting his body just enough to be able to look down at me, eyes not really seeing or absorbing.

He said my name and I ran my hands up and down his sides. “What is it?” I asked in a whisper. Speaking was typically forbidden during close contact for it could awaken him to a reality he dared not acknowledge. One where he actually had _relations_.

He didn’t reply immediately, perhaps running the words through his head a few times. “Why do you - want to be with me? Want to do this with me? I’m nothing.”

I gripped the fabric at his sides tighter. “You’re not nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t you say that about yourself. I don’t want to hear that. I want to do this because - because I like being close to you, and the first time was - it was wonderful. It was _amazing_. Is that okay?”

He paused again before answering. “Not sure I believe you. ”

“Well, I’ll just have to tell you as many times as you need to hear it so you will believe me.”

I brought a hand up to run along his jaw and cupped his neck to indicate we should resume. Rather than complying, he broke away completely to sit against the far side of the furniture. I followed suit, curling my legs under me, well aware my blouse was askew and positioned myself firmly against him, and rested my head on his shoulder.

“Can we...just sit for a while?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. 

There were some days, many days more recently, where this is all we did when he came over. He was so averse to physical contact in public because of how uncomfortable it made him, which is only because he never had any as a child, no nourishing hugs from a caring mother, no girls who admired him and took his hand on the playground. He was probably the child who needed to lash out because he didn’t know anything else. But this, this practice we had started of simply _being _together, it was helping. Slowly, sometimes reluctantly, but necessary and wanted to become comfortable, to not cringe when I slipped my fingers between his on the train.

He was still tense but I dared not make another move since this is what he requested for the time. 

He reached over with light fingers on my shoulder, where they rested for a while, and I shut my eyes to the room, concentrating instead on the steady rise and fall of his breath. 

He said my name, once weakly, again to get my full attention. I pushed away and looked at him, his arm falling, fingers flexing along my lower spine.

I stole a kiss before he could hesitate again. This time, he responded in full and we resumed our positions collapsed in the cushions where all would be absorbed, safe.

Removing only what was necessary, we inhaled each other’s utterances and guttural outbursts. After almost two and a half months since our first experience, the waiting clock had finally stopped ticking as we extracted a half hour from our routine. 

Walter squeezed shut his eyes as he came; _how could any of this be real_?

Sedated as quickly as aroused, I held tightly to the man against my chest whose emotions could best him. I sighed and Walter turned his head on my chest, his stubble itching through my blouse. His eyes met mine, the light from the kitchen illumining one side of his face, casting a shadow down to spill into the floor.

“You’re tired,” he observed. 

I laughed. “You’re not?”

And then, retracting from his position to look down at me fully, he smiled. Not an ear-to-ear grin that could slice his face in two, nor a foolish one slapped on by hormonal teenage boys in a brimming afterglow, but the barely parted upturn of the lips that invited more kisses and shameful words.

Instead, it disappeared and he ordered that I go to sleep. _ Just as well_, I thought as I rolled out from under and adjusted myself. I kissed his cheek, my legs weak as I stood and shuffled through the kitchen. I wouldn’t dare _extract _more than necessary for tonight.

Almost to the stairs, I asked, “Will you join me?”

A small shake of his head with hands already halfway down the buttons of his shirt.

“Tomorrow,” he said. And then, “Wait.” He barely looked back over his shoulder as he spoke in hushed tones. “I didn’t mean this to seem like I...this ...was out of nowhere…. Since then I wasn’t sure -”

“Walter,” I said, silencing him. I strode back to where he sat now, knelt before him, and placed my hands on his knees. He was still disheveled, and inappropriate thoughts passed through my mind. _ Concentrate. _ I looked up at him, not quite meeting his gaze, and said, “I want this. I want you. I need you to know that. This is what people do, that’s what happens in our type of relationship. It _ does _ come from nowhere.” I pivoted myself up to sit on the edge of the sofa next to him, placing tentative fingers on his thigh. I paused, bit my lip, and struggled to look at him again. I had to, I had to get this out. “But… if you want something to rest on your mind tonight in place of that, then think of this.” I reached over and gripped his face tight in my hands and with as much assurance as I could to quell my sudden trembling, I said, “I love you.” 

I withdrew, stood up, and stepped back as he cast his gaze out the window. “You don’t have to say anything,” I managed to say, my voice weakening with every second. “I just wanted you to hear it.” Those words had become an unbearable weight that needed to be discarded before I snapped and screamed it at him. I had hoped to wait longer, not for any day in particular, but one in which Walter had not just said something that resembled a doubt.

I smoothed out my skirt with trembling hands and headed back to the stairs. As I looked at his still back thoughtfully, I considered adding more words to drown my new fear that I had just planted a seed of anxiety.

I wished him a good sleep and ascended to bed where I feebly prayed for Walter to join me.

He did not.

* * *

Saturday night and Sunday came and went with no disturbance, rising moons and suns observed our exhausted forms within a perfectly-made bed as we all but exchanged words during the night. He expressed distaste for his current job, nothing I hadn’t witnessed while there with him, cursed his supervisor and coworkers vividly, and admitted to finally having punched a man after hours for disparaging my appearances at the factory.

“What did he say?”

He curled tighter into himself away from me. “Never you mind.”

* * *

St. Patrick’s was that Tuesday and Walter was relieved of work for the day. We sat on someone’s apartment steps around the corner of the parade route and watched the celebrants from a distance. No one noticed us. Unlike the entirety of Manhattan which was drunk by noon, we were rife with boredom within an hour, escaped to a diner for lunch, and departed our separate ways for the remainder of the day.

I recalled that this weekend was Walter’s birthday, another touchy matter since he was not the type to want to take the day frivolously. Therefore, I visited as usual during his lunch shift with an extra sandwich and promised another casserole tonight. The lightest smile of contentment upturned his lips when I left.

By the time of the following Saturday, I had not heard from or seen Walter all week. This was not unusual but my mind was trying to attribute this lack of contact to my sudden confession. I considered going over to knock on his door but stayed put, my heart rapping with unnecessary insistence that I do something. Still, I did not call or appear at his workplace until my nerves finally and relentlessly tugged my legs to his apartment late on the twenty-eighth.

Sitting out in the darkness, accompanied only by wandering bums, sewer emissions, street clatter, and the pin on my collar, I waited, occasionally shifting aside to let another building occupant pass. It was so late, there was no way he was still at the factory. It was long past closing, unless Walter was using the machines for personal reasons, but never once since meeting him did I see a new shirt on his back or trousers on his legs. I shuttered to think that something might have _happened_, but if anything _did _happen, it would have been to the person that Walter encountered and not to Walter himself. I waited in silence, a casual observer to the nightly dangers that lurked in this area, until it was well past an hour since I had first arrived. I stood, giving one last look through the door pane before stepping to the sidewalk.

I was only a half block down when I heard my name called.

I scurried back to Walter who was crossing the middle of the street. I was ecstatic but still curious where he had been when he asked if I was waiting here long. “Dangerous. It’s late.” I noticed that his voice was softer than usual, trailing, his eyes slightly glazed over as he led me inside the building. Every footstep and turn of his key was meticulously enacted as if he had never tread here or placed his hands upon the metal doorknob before.

I clicked the door shut as quietly as I could behind me, afraid to startle him. I did not turn on a light for the same reason; we stood in the familiar black darkness with trembling shadows that reacted to every minute movement outdoors. 

His back towards me in the entryway, Walter was silent, stoic; I couldn’t even hear him breathing, no rise and fall of his shoulders and he made no motion to remove his hat.

As I placed a hand around to his arm, Walter tensed and withdrew, as if awoken from a daydream, and passed over to his mattress without even taking off his coat or shoes. He sat down and I approached to kneel at his side, hands clasped tight in my lap. I waited and watched. Walter slowly withdrew a clump of white fabric from an inside pocket, like a dove from a cage, turning it over in a fist and revealing black splotches in the spaces between his fingers.

_ Is this the material? This was featured on the news, wasn’t it? I didn’t think… how… _

As if reading my mind, Walter spoke, his voice low. “You remember, don’t you. You asked if I ever worked with this.” He balled and stretched it and then I realized that the blotches were _moving_. “Belonged to her. The woman in the paper.”

_ The paper? What? Yesterday. The woman in the paper. The only woman in yesterday’s paper … _ I recalled vaguely that Walter had made something that someone didn’t like… “The woman that was murdered two weeks ago? Is that who you’re talking about?”

Not hearing me, he continued, “Said once I could do it. Be a vigilante. I said no, didn’t want to.”

Peeling my eyes away from his worn face, absorbed in the feel and hypnotizing liquid motions of black on white, and back to the fabric in his hands, he stretched it again completely. It was a mask that sent a quiver down my back into my toes because it formed those patterns they give people to test personalities and emotions. People could see the strangest things in those.

Walter slipped a hand up into the mask and took off his hat with another.

_ Don’t put it on_. I had to know why first.

I clamped a hand around the wrist that did not hold the mask and told Walter to look at me. He would not. “Walter, I – where did this come from? I mean, I- I’m glad you want to do this. I always thought you should. You should…. But why this material, why now?”

Selfish thoughts raced through my brain before he replied. This was bad timing. We weren’t ready for an interruption, I wasn’t ready to lose him to that world.

“Shame. Ashamed for humanity who let that happen. Did you read?”

I nodded. ‘Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police’ in the NY Times. I think I still had the paper laying on the floor someplace at home.

The same question rested in the back of my mind that parents ask their children who want to join the military. _ Why you? Why do you feel _you _have to do this? _He had to. Because of his father, because of his mother, because of every injustice spat out by disgusting men to make them feel empowered. Walter felt the pain and confusion of the masses and wanted to know why anyone would willingly watch and do nothing while a woman was stabbed, screaming. If Walter had been there, he would have done something, I knew he would.

Selfishly, I wondered if I had any effect on this man at all. _ He loves me to the highest degree he _can _feel love_. I could feel that. But his decision was even more important and I felt humbled. At least that’s the emotion I knew I had to keep towards the surface.

I knew the rest even before Walter had to tell me. The last two nights he committed to designing and sewing the mask, stopping once briefly to reconsider, but he knew that this had to be made. The fabric was for him, meant for him, and he would cover his real face with this one.

“Otherwise I won’t be able to look at myself anymore.”

“Walter,” I said, my hand still around his wrist, thumb lightly trailing back and forth along the freckles. If I kept rubbing, they might fade away.

_ Don’t leave me. _

The eyes that met me then were filled with a desire to be forgiven for future transgressions, for time spent apart, for past hesitancies; they wavered on a fine balance between the man he was and that which he now aspired to be.

“I hope you don’t ever have to see me with this on.”

“So when you get the shit beaten out of you, I’ll know immediately. Good. I’ll have the alcohol ready.”

He flashed me that brief smile.

“Do you have a name for yourself?”

Blank eyes returned to the flexible latex encased around both his hands, his fingers following the blobs from within. He nodded and only said one word. “Rorschach.”


	15. Promises, 1964

“Rorschach?”

I had only a few seconds to comprehend the name that rang through my ears. It was a name that my students liked to throw around when they pretended they were insane criminals during recess, not really knowing what they were saying or doing. How did elementary school students know about Hermann Rorschach? _ Oh right, I think one of their fathers was a shrink_. _ A cheap shrink who can’t get his kid new clothes. The one that came in during Career Day. _ A new name meant an identity - an identity whose real face even I had to pretend was secret.

“Well… it -” I swallowed hard, “it’s appropriate…. Considering….” I realized I had bitten the corner of my lip until it bled. Walter noticed and smeared away the blood, wiping it on his knee. Instinctually, I craned forward to his touch but said nothing as I realized what this all meant, and I stared at the shifting shapes in his hands, my mind seeing what it feared to see. That he’d have to be out at night. Every night. _ That _was the look that he had given me just now, the look he still had on his face. The equivalent of saying, ‘I’ll say I’m sorry if you want to hear it. But it’s impossible.’ He was biting back words himself; I saw it in his slightly trembling bottom lip and the fingers that still moved within the mask over his hands. And once that mask was on, he’d be someone else: a man in whose life I would dare not interfere. I could never say his name aloud if I ever did see him with the mask on. If I were ever out at night, I would not know him. I _ could _not know him. _ No_, I thought distantly, _ this is his decision, a good decision as long as he comes to me instead of going to a nurse and compromising his identity_. It looked like I’d be staying late in the school library, probably even having to travel to the for medical books. My thoughts raced. _ Learn how to make stitches, what chemicals I can get at a local drugstore, maybe even rescue breathing, maybe even how to set a - _

“Are you sad?”

His voice was barely an echo to my ears. I didn’t understand his question the first time; I was dazed in new visions of Walter stumbling down dark alleyways with a gun to his head and mobsters seeking revenge. I saw him breaking their arms in the name of retribution and moral absolutism, philosophies I had labeled on actions during the times I was witness to his capabilities.

He asked again, turning his head to look at me but not at my eyes; they were still lost in the black and white. 

I shook my head. “N-no.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“I - I’m not…” My absentminded hand to my face felt the tears welling in my eyes.

“Are you scared?”

I broke away from the mask to match his gaze, my tongue and cold fingers flicking over the dried blood that had quickly formed on my lip.

“I -” I was. I didn’t want him to know, though, I didn’t want to seem selfish or overly concerned. But despite the assurance in the depths of my thoughts that I had no reason to be scared, I was. I was terrified.

He stood, and I found myself casting my eyes away from his legs.

His voice from above was growing slightly harsher with every word as I gripped the floor to either side of me. “Don’t. Suggested this. _ You_. You just said you were glad. You smiled.”

He thought I was pretending. When I craned my head up, he crouched back down in front of me, the fabric clutched in one fist dangling between his legs. I looked at him squarely, swallowed again, and said through gritted teeth, suddenly a sad, pathetic schoolgirl on the day of the draft. “Promise me you won’t die.”

He shook his head. “Know what I said about promises.”

I jutted forward and dug nails into his knee. “Do it!”

“No,” he growled, eyes burning.

It was like I had been hit in the head with a rogue baseball. Suddenly I was ashamed and I fell back to clutch my legs to myself. I swiftly muttered an apology and looked elsewhere. I watched a bug scuttle along the floorboards and into a crack in the corner by the bathroom. There was something in the corner I hadn’t noticed before - some machine, a contraption. _ Used it to make the mask_. I heard only Walter breathing inches away as my head lay on my knees and wondered what was passing through his mind. I wish I knew.

“Don’t put up with me if you’re scared. It’s unhealthy. Can’t be sure of anything.”

Resting my chin in the little valley between my knees, I stared at him, squinting any last tears away. Was he suddenly trying to get rid of me? I had to calm myself. “What’re you - You’ll be fine. Walter, you’ll be fine.”

“Then why ask that?”

“_ Jesus_,” I hissed, thrusting myself up to stand. I could feel my face flushing, my heart beating a few thumps too fast. I admitted with open hands of defeat that “ _ Yes _, I am scared. But not for your safety.” I paced back and forth a few steps, looking down at Walter who crouched in accepting silence. “I am scared … of losing you to a world that is going to drown you in its suffering and I’m afraid … that you’re going to go down with it.”

“Then leave me,” he said flatly.

_ To keep me safe? To stay out of the way? _ “ _ What? _ No.”

“You’ll drown, too.”

I dropped back down to my knees in front of him. “I won’t! I’ll be here. You enter the world out there, but you still have your job, you’ll still have me around!”

“You’ll get bored. Impatient,” he said, diverting his gaze to the floor.

“God_damn_it, Walter…. Why would you say that? What do I have to say or do for you to believe that I fucking love you! Please believe me: I am so in love with you. How many times do you have to hold onto me until I fall asleep for you to _get it_? Do you even _know _why you do that?” I took a quick breath, hoping he’d look up at me. When he didn’t, I continued, “Was I wrong all this time to assume that - that you believed every word from my lips and every touch, every action? Tell me I wasn’t wrong!”

I felt tears straining in the backs of my eyes again, and I bit back any other accusations that might have escaped. I had to calm myself and placed a hand over the fist clenching the mask.

Some tense moments later, Walter whispered, “You’re right,” he said, shifting his eyes back and forth from the wood to the mask. “Still need you.”

His broken whispers were lined with a sense of anguish. When he finally looked back up at me with the eyes of a cheating husband seeking forgiveness from a broken-hearted wife, my weak smile tugged me forward into a soft kiss on a closed mouth, my fingers barely brushing his jaw. I withdrew and he added an even softer “Sorry.” 

I shook my head. “No, I shouldn’t yell at you, you - you showed me this and I - I’m sorry,” I said, applying light pressure to his leg to push him down on his knees. 

I was tired now, strained. I wanted him to get on his way. I wanted it to be years later so he could see that I never ran away.

As we knelt before each other on the hard and warped wooden floor, my fingers scraping across its surface, I leaned forward again and kissed his chin, then a corner of his lips. Walter captured my mouth with his, exhaling warm breath and a tentative tongue to my teeth. I returned the motion and each successive kiss was more tender and apologetic than the last. _ Where did this all come from? _ I wondered. Even though I was still confused by his words, forgiveness was easy. My hands threaded back through his hair where they stayed even as he caught a breath and said my name.

“In the mornings. Do you have time?”

My forehead to his, I nodded. “How early?”

“Six.”

I sighed heavily and relaxed, ending all contact. Like a boy whose butterfly dies in its glass jar, Walter frowned.

I stretched out my legs to either side of him and clapped hands to his thighs. “How about this: if you get fucked up, call me. Doesn’t matter what time. I’d even make you a copy of my key. I think it’s about time, anyway. Or you can break a window. Stumble in battered and bruised. I’ll be there. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

He scoffed and unclenched the mask in his hand, causing it to unfurl into full form. I looked away back to the crack in the wall. The bug had reappeared from behind the contraption to nest at the foot of the mattress as if attracted to this new development.

“I need to do this,” he said like it was some wonderful revelation. And it was; it was nothing to be taken lightly. The resolve and absolute certainty in his eyes - even the lingering shame that creased his mouth - manifested themselves in his tone of voice and flexing fingers.

Rubbing my palms over the rough material of his pants, I said, “I know you do…I know. Just, please come back to me.”

He nodded and placed the mask on the floor by his hat with as much delicacy as a boy with a broken-winged bird. He finally removed his coat, lifting from his position momentarily to pull it off completely, and tossed it back on the mattress. All that was left was his shoes.

I was still in my own outerwear and wasn’t even sure if I would be removing it tonight.

“You know you’ll have to get back into shape,” I said.

“Gym down the block.”

“And at the school. I could probably get you in late. Or find an old punching bag you could hang up in here,” I said, gesturing up at the ceiling. Although by the looks of it, the plaster was likely to cave in with any added weight. More light-heartedly, I added, “I remember you said you boxed.” Then softer, “That explains a lot.”

I smiled, successful in extracting the smallest upturn of his lips in response to my foolish comment, allaying any remaining tension. After another moment, he stood and I mimicked him, stepping back and brushing the hair from my face.

“Should I make you something? It’s not too late.” I hoped that the passion we just experienced would linger longer, but it didn’t appear that way. The moment he mentioned his intentions again, we found ourselves inexorably drawn back into reality.

I wasn’t ready to leave for the night, but when he muttered a ‘no’ and bent down to gather his things, I knew he should be left to his thoughts. Now that it was finalized that Walter Kovacs would be Rorschach under the cloud-covered moon, I felt another wave of catharsis, similar to that which I had felt when Walter first called me in acknowledgment that my intrusion in his life was welcomed. Walter was caring, plain and simple. He cared about his work despite the conditions and cared for me somewhere in that heart of his. His new discovery of shame for the human race fueled his motivations to purge the streets of moral filth. Work by day, fight crime by night: that’s how it would be. I would still fit into his world somehow, but only into the world of Walter Kovacs for as long as he still existed. I hoped that he would not succumb to the allure of his alter-ego but maintain his humanity for as long as we were together.

“When do you start?” I asked. “Those bastards aren’t going to wait for you.”

Coat and hat in hand, Walter stepped around me to fling them up on the hooks by the door.

“Not ready. One more day. I’m not going to work tomorrow.”

Did he need a day to psyche up? Did he want to work out, test his body, see what he can handle the first night on the streets?

“No. Come on. Get your things on and walk me home. I’m sure something will find you on the way back.”

He shot me a raised eyebrow, pausing between my words and his slight nod. “Alright.”

He retrieved his coat from the wall and donned it one arm at a time, fixed his hat on his head, and extracted from his pocket the gloves he had not worn coming home. He went back to snatch the mask from beside the mattress, tucking it in an inner pocket for the time being. “Alright,” he said again. “Let’s go.”

There was a childish eagerness in his steps as we walked to the subway station. I could only guess at how he would feel the first time wearing the mask with the intention of seeking out evil. _ Like the Minutemen_, I thought, _ from when we were real little_. They were gone now and I wondered if there was anyone else like Walter out in this infested maze of a city, if there _would _be anyone out here as the years passed. How long will he be fighting alone?

Clacking footsteps echoed down into the earth. We waited only a few minutes at the edge of the platform before the first car pulled into view. I could see Walter’s fingers flexing in his pockets as I followed him into the car, and then felt a fist clench at my side as we sat together in the back. After the initial jolt of the train backward - we tended to sit away from the direction of travel - things felt calmer as the train curved and bumped along. As a few passengers boarded at each stop while more got off, I didn’t take notice as to whether they were tired or drunk. These rides were always calming at night and always had been whenever we rode together towards the Park or work or home. I looked at Walter’s reflection in the grimy cracked window as I had done so many times before when even my gaze might be too much for him to handle. Brim low, I couldn’t see his eyes; his expressionless mouth sucked in a cheek as he chewed a flap of skin. I turned away from his foggy mirror-self and became aware that Walter had pulled out a hand from his pocket and removed the glove, laying it palm up on his thigh. I grabbed his hand, tucking it between us out of sight and squeezed tight. It was nice to not feel leather for once, even if his hand was a little clammy. The seat in front obscured any wandering eyes; there was no one to our side. We were safe.

“Make sure you still come tomorrow,” he uttered.

“Of course I will. It’s Sunday.”

A moment passed as I looked back to observe the other sleepy passengers rattling home until I wondered why he’d say such a thing.

“I have no reason to stop coming. I’ll keep coming for years. If that’s the only time I get to see you, so be it. But I hope you get hurt every once in a while.”

_Womanly instincts_ _and a desire to take care of the man in her life._

“Kisses don’t make things better.”

“Really?” I teased. “I won’t do it anymore then.”

He loosened his grip on my hand but I wouldn’t let go. “You know that’s not-”

“I know what you meant.” In the corner of my brain responsible for love and erotic desires, I felt like a girl who’d be waving her man off to war the next day, impatient for one last love-making session. I chuckled to myself and he asked a simple “What?”

“Nothing….” His mother probably never kissed his scraped elbows and told him it would be okay. “If only I could kiss you everywhere over and over from now on,” I sighed. I don’t know if he heard me as my stop was announced and we shuffled off and up into the night air.

A short walk brought us to my apartment steps. I traveled up to the landing, searching for the key in my pocket, and I didn’t even realize that he had stopped at the base of the stairs to look up at me until he spoke.

“You’re beautiful,” he said in a voice low enough that ears through open windows would not hear.

At first, I didn’t realize he knew that phrase. I chuckled and turned back around. “What?”

“I mean it,” he added. “More than -” _ Than what? _ He rolled his shoulders under his coat and scratched at his chest in the place where his mask was hiding. “Than anything.”

_He_ _must have learned that from the movie we saw_. I went back down the few steps and stopped just in front of him, leaving barely any room between our bodies. He appeared startled; would I dare kiss him in the open for saying that? 

Applying a firm hand to his collar, I lurched him towards me, closing the space. “Hey. Go out there and fuck up someone tonight who really deserves it. And then come back here and tell me that again upstairs.”

I released and he stepped back, eyes wide. But before I let him loose into the wild dark city streets, I applied a soft caressing hand to his shoulder which he examined from the corner of his eye briefly. I wanted to say sorry for yelling at him and I wanted to confess my love for him again. I wanted to say that I understood why he doubted me and why he wanted me out of his life as soon as possible now that he chose this alter-ego to replace our nights together. Those nights that had only been ours were gone now, fled into the crime-infested streets that we had always walked together. On the weekends, we would only have a total of two hours to ourselves in the factory. _ If he comes to me when I hope he does, I won’t be sleeping much anymore. _

“What is it?” he finally asked, freeing me from my thoughts.

I smiled and shook my head. “Just be safe,” I said. I held his gaze for a moment more, while he was still Walter Kovacs.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I swiped my hand back and ascended the steps, bidding him good night on the way up.

Locking the door behind me, I collapsed down against the door in a heap, throwing my keys onto the kitchen tiles and banged my head back on the thick wood. _ This _is _what it feels like_. What every woman or girl feels when a male relation enters the police force or the military. Because as certain as they are that their man in the best of the best and will be the one still alive at the end of the day, they will never really _know _until he comes home in a body bag or not at all. Every wife and daughter, sister and girlfriend _know _that their husband, father, brother, or boyfriend won’t be the one with the gunshot wound or the missing limb. And I succumbed to this belief. I _ knew _that Walter would do right to this world and he’d keep doing right.

High-strung thoughts for a young woman blinded by love, that’s what this was. I cursed myself for blowing up at Walter like that but I cursed him just as harshly for even _daring _to think I’d leave him just because he was putting himself in danger. The only way I would leave Walter is if he did something unforgivable, but even then, I would do everything to find a reason to forgive. Walter did not deserve to be left alone a second time. I was sure that memories of his childhood and his mother still haunted him, despite my hopes that I had replaced her image by now.

Our argument, my scolds and his rejecting words, still drifted through my thoughts as I tried to distract myself with other things: the coming school week, planning a possible field-trip, how much I hoped that Walter would appear at the school again one day….

“Dammit,” I hissed to myself, standing to stretch. “It’ll be okay.” Once more, I cursed myself for these selfish thoughts, feeling that I was _losing _him to something that I myself had suggested only months prior.

I convinced myself to go to sleep, finding that it took longer than usual to drift off for the night.

* * *

There was a muted rapping at the front door. I turned to look at the clock by my bed. It read 1:40. I stretched, groggily yelling down “I’m coming” at the second knock as I shuffled out of bed and down the steps. Almost slipping as I opened the first door, I lunged forward to catch myself on the knob of the apartment door which I unlocked and opened to reveal Walter, a new bruise on his cheek.

I sighed at his appearance and asked, “What happened?” _ What do you think happened_? I chided myself.

“Told me to come back.”

He stepped in and shrugged off his coat, wincing. Slamming and locking the doors shut, I went around to face the man I didn’t actually expect to return tonight. I was immediately thankful it would only be Sunday in the morning as I slung his coat over the railing. During his first attempt to peel the blood-stained gloves from his fingers, Walter said, “Blood - on my gloves. Shouldn’t touch you with them.”

In defiance, I took his hands in mine and held tight for a moment before releasing. He looked down, curious as to why I would have done such a thing. There were dark crimson splotches on my palms and fingertips.

“Tainted something beautiful,” he growled, ripping off the stained black leather from his bruised hands.

I went to the sink to wash off a stranger’s blood, wondering exactly _why _ I just did that. To prove that I was not afraid? I asked him who he encountered. He did not answer and had not moved from the entryway.

“Walter?”

“Can’t say. Please don’t ask.”

It was the word ‘Please’ that struck me and I accepted it with the knowledge that I was to be separate from his life as Rorschach. This request did not hurt; it was not as harsh as when Walter told me to leave him, but withholding information was almost worse than lying.

“Okay,” I said. “I won’t.” I sighed again deeply, wondering if he would ever offer me information as the nights drew on. I wondered how long he was planning to be Rorschach. _ Another discussion for another day _ …. _ Or perhaps for never. _

Stepping forward, I took Walter by the arm and pushed him towards the stairs. He understood and ascended before me, stripping to his undershirt in silence as I wrapped myself back up under the comforter.

I felt small cuts on his fingers as Walter lay with me, arm wrapped around to my chest. This was peace. This was the comfort, the friendship, the security and love that we had developed over the past months through unspoken promises - I dared to use that term - that _this _was all we needed, all that could be afforded. There was no hope left for a ‘normal’ relationship, although I doubted that we ever had one from the start.

“I wish I could tell you,” he whispered into my neck. “The truth might frighten you.”

If I wasn’t so tired, I’d scoff. “You know that’s shit, Walter. Especially since I’ve _ seen _ you beat men up.” _ Which is one of the things that drew you to me in the first place. _ He always ‘saved’ me in some sense even if I was not the reason behind his actions.

Slipping his arm from mine, he rolled to his back.

“I’m not mad,” I added.

“Disappointed.”

_ Disappointed? Yeah…. Maybe that was it. _ “It’s okay. Really. I understand” I stretched around my back blindly feeling for his chest and arm, desiring contact. “That doesn’t mean we can’t keep this up.” _ This _something _of ours. _

Enveloping his body once more around mine, Walter lightly kissed my shoulder blade, sparking me to alertness for the next half hour.

We entangled ourselves in apologetic kisses and caresses that night before I finally slept and he retreated to the couch downstairs.

* * *

Nights like those continued for months and it wasn’t until a day in June that I started to cry weakly over the kitchen sink. I felt pain, but I did not know what to blame or why the sudden tears. The frustration that I experienced from only seeing Walter briefly over the weekends and the nights in which he felt like a reverie was excruciating sometimes. The resulting guilt was even more painful. I never once allowed him to see that I was slowly deteriorating and now that classes were out for the summer, there was not much to distract me from my horrible thoughts.

But every time we saw each other during the day, it was like Rorschach did not exist, despite the bruises and cuts that accumulated on Walter’s hands. I bought him several pairs of identical leather gloves that should last a lifetime. Those days in the factory and the nights in which he visited me only to sleep were revitalizing, creating the newest cycle of comings and goings.

I rarely allowed myself to watch the television or read the newspaper anymore in case there was a report about Rorschach. I agreed to stay out of that life and I did my best to know nothing until I became aware of a man who called himself Nite Owl the following year, 1965. 


	16. Plea of Repentance, '65

The months slowly drew on and every weekday felt the same to me. Walter came to my apartment during the night so infrequently that I finally dared to speak up one Saturday and ask him about the newest Nite Owl. I had suspicions that they were associated and wondered who, if either, had approached the other. Walter’s eyes raised in recognition of the name but said nothing about the man and told me not to worry. 

_ You do know him. I was right, wasn’t I? _“I’m not worrying,” I said. “I think it would be nice if you weren’t always alone, though. Strength in numbers, you know?”

He nodded but said no more and finished eating his sandwich.

If we were anywhere else but the factory, I probably would have demanded that he tell me about this man. I no longer accepted his reason that it would be safer for me to stay out of the way and to not know what went on at night. It hurt more to be left in the dark. Walter wasn’t a government agent; he wasn’t part of some secret society that would kill me if I knew too much. But I brought up the name again that night when Walter stumbled to my door for the first time in weeks, bloody mask and hat clutched in his fist. I refused to move from the doorway until he admitted that he did know this other hero.

“Let me in,” he coughed, slamming a hand on the doorway next to my head. “Okay.”

I led Walter in with a supporting arm around his back and helped him up the stairs one at a time. I dropped my arm from his body and turned on a light. Stumbling into the bathroom, he flung his mask and fedora to the floor, eager to reach the sink and spit up blood under the faucet. He did not bother to rinse his mouth and I stood to his side, watching the mixing hues seep down through the grated drain like sewage in a rainstorm. Walter wiped away a smudge of rich red on his cracked glove before peeling the leather from his hands and tossing the used pair onto the commode. 

Like every night when he chose to seek my help, I wondered who Walter had encountered tonight and why he was here. _ Why tonight? Why not yesterday? Why not the day before? Why not last week? _ Finally, I forced Walter out of his coat as he fought to stand up straight, gripping the edges of the sink with head hung low and hair matted from the mask. I flung the heavy garment out on the bed before returning to stand with crossed arms against the doorframe. 

I never asked questions when he came to me like this. He let me take care of him because any resistance was pointless. Sometimes he growled ‘No, I’ll do it,’ but I never listened.

After he splashed water on his face in the sink and padded dry with a towel, he turned to me and I noticed dried blood surrounding a rip on his upper shirt sleeve.

I ordered him to sit on the edge of the bathtub as I dug through the medicine cabinet and under the sink for gauze and alcohol. He took off his shirt, peeling it as carefully as possible from the wound and dropped it behind him in the tub. I sat beside him to swab away the blood and wrapped up his arm tightly. Walter said nothing as he hunched over, his lost and empty eyes straying in the direction of my lap or out towards the bedroom. Perhaps he was embarrassed that he accepted my care wordlessly, that he had come so rarely these days. It was as if every few hours we spent together like this was to make up for the weeks in which he disappeared and I was left to wonder when he would next appear on the sidewalk outside my home. 

It was almost two in the morning and I was in my nightwear, bare feet cold on the tiles and legs goose-pimpled from contact with the tub. As I tightened the gauze, he craned hesitantly to press his lips to mine; I faintly tasted a mixture of blood and water that had remained after he washed his face. I smiled weakly and rubbed a hand along his shoulders as he looked away again to stare at the floor blankly. 

He relaxed as the motions continued and muttered a ‘Thank you’ before standing. 

Ignoring the mirror of the medicine cabinet, Walter looked down at me and said, “Can’t tell you his real name.”

“I know.”

“Been awhile. He found me on the street one night in the middle of a fight. Helped out. Partners ever since. We’re doing well out there. He’s a good man, good friend, but you can’t meet him. I’m - sorry - that I don’t come by as often. Orders me to take care of myself. He’s like you. ‘Dammit, Rorschach,’ he says, ‘stop moving or the stitches will snap.’”

We both smiled in forced amusement. He said there’s been something big going on that I would hear about in the news soon.

“Does he know what you look like?” I asked.

“No. Better that way.”

“Do you think he’d know you on the street?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re hiding in plain sight from everyone, aren’t you?” I sighed and stood to put everything away. He backed up a step to stay out of the mirror’s view. His razor still lay behind the faucet from when I had last helped him shave.

“I’m not hiding from you,” he said. His voice wavered for the first time in months.

“But you _are_, Walter. You are.” I turned from the cabinet to face him completely, resting a hand on the edge of the sink and using the other to gesture. “I’ve been trying to understand and I appreciate it, I really do. I appreciate that you want to keep me separate. But then you come back to me like this and there’s no pretending. Rorschach is _so _apparent in your wounds and your eyes and even your voice that you can’t keep that apart anymore. Maybe during the day you can. You’re Walter Kovacs in the factory when I bring you lunch. Even though you don’t want me to see you with that mask on, it doesn’t really matter. I just -” It was getting harder for me to look at him. “I want to know what you’ve been up to. How many people are you giving to the police? How much safer is the city now than a year ago? What have you learned? What - what code do you follow? …. Anything.”

He said my name, in a tone indicating that I shouldn’t ask any more questions. “Not now.”

He was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, but I was beyond frustrated, and although I felt guilty and knew I shouldn’t pursue this again, I did.

“Let me know about him. About Rorschach. You.”

“Why are you difficult?” he asked.

“I think I could ask you that.” It reminded me of that Christmas night when we were outside. _ If I’ve been difficult, I understand_, he had said, and at the time I replied that he hadn’t been.

“I won’t tell you. Stop asking me.”

“You’ve never considered it?”

“I have.”

“Then why? Because you’ve claimed you want to keep me safe, to keep me out of the way, to protect me, but it hurts _so much more _than if you could just lie to me, if you had kept that mask a secret. But you _ showed _ me and you _ told _me, so you have to take the last step.”

“Please.” His voice wavered again and he looked away from me momentarily. “Don’t think it hadn’t been hard for me, too.”

I wanted to say more, something about never keeping promises, but what he said just now in a voice just above a harsh whisper had me only utter “Walter…”

He cleared his voice, shifting from one foot to the other, unsure if he should say what I thought he wanted to say. “Strange… without you. Nights someplace else. I miss…” He trailed off and said no more until I reached out tentatively to take him by the wrist.

_ Say it. Please let me hear you say it. _

Instead, he digressed. “I can’t let you. It’s too dangerous.”

Through all my frustration and anger, I knew he was right. I hated it.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I hate admitting it, but you’re right. You’re right.“

He was not satisfied, though, and pulled away to sit on the edge of the bed, looking at me, waiting.

I flicked the lights back off and found my way in the dark to sit beside him.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“Not leaving. I doubted you. I’m sorry.”

“I said before it was okay.”

“Can’t help it. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to keep saying that,” I sighed.

As I scooted back about to lie down, he stopped me completely, body and heart, with two faltering words that I would not have heard if there had been a police siren or a thunderclap just then. I praised anything and everything that the world had stilled just for a second, just for us.

“Love you.” He was looking to the side, eyes trying to find me but I was behind him, out of his sight. “For a while,” he added, clearing his throat. “I do - love you.” His words did not register in my mind until he stood and uttered a “Good night,” taking a step towards the doorway. 

There was a knot in my chest that overwhelmed me, urging me to stand and swing him around. He averted his eyes from mine, examining the buttons of my shirt and the floor before taking a step back.

Instead of replying with an unnecessary ‘Really?’ or ‘Thank you’ or ‘I know,’ I kissed his cheek and lingered, brushing my nose against his jawline with light fingertips to his arm. I told him to rest well tonight and shut the door gently as he descended downstairs.

And yet two hours later, I was still not asleep. Unable to convince myself to stay in bed any longer, I tiptoed down in the darkness, trying my hardest not to make any noise as I padded through the kitchen. I failed when Walter turned around from his position on the sofa and asked what I was doing. “Should be asleep,” he said. 

His eyes bore the look of tired resignation like he should have known better than to open his mouth upstairs. He turned back to look down at his hands as I came around to sit beside him, legs curled under myself. I wrapped a hand behind his neck, encouraging him to comply with my desires before the sun rose. 

I wondered if he regretted saying those words to me, knowing that this was the likely outcome. _ He’s still a man_, I thought. _ He’s still subject to nature_. He was incapable of lying and anyone might assume that a man devoid of love as a child had no chance of feeling love later in life. I had presumed his feelings for a while, so while the confession was not entirely shocking, just incredibly delayed, I turned and recycled the scene over and over in my head. The way that he felt love may not be the same way that _ I _ felt love, it might be a different form completely. The word ‘love’ might be exchanged with ‘thank’ or ‘need’ or ‘miss’ or might imply something like ‘After all this time, I still have nothing to say to you, but stick around a little longer, okay? Then maybe I’ll come up with something and let you know.’

Warm breath stained my chest and I accidentally scratched at the few nearly-healed wounds on Walter’s back, a little blood seeping under my nails. Light teeth marks faded into a bruise on his shoulders as my mind wandered again.

_ No_, I thought. I cursed myself. _ This is love, his way of expressing thanks, desire, longing. Those can be summed up in one word and more words can be added to that one word and _ -

“What took you so long? To say that?”

“I was scared,” he said gruffly. He shuttered his release, heavy pants barely slowing before he spoke again. “Realized that was stupid. Don’t want to lose you. You’re not a whore, not like them, not seducing, not manipulative. You’re the exception. Remember? No deception, no delusion. Said what I felt, otherwise you’d never know.”

Another kiss forbade me from speaking again and we fell into silence and into sleep until morning.

* * *

The following evening, Walter tossed his things on a kitchen chair, turned around, and began to apologize again for his recent absences. I silenced him with a firm kiss, hands clasped tightly to his face. He did not respond but relaxed to my touch and I released.

I stepped back to examine Walter, the new bruise on his forehead that would swell by morning, the scrapes on his knuckles and the ripped belt loop. His shirt needed pressing. I could see old bloodstains on his undershirt and wondered if the Nite Owl ever did Walter’s laundry.

I would find out soon enough as the months wore on, days of silent contentment fatigued by nights of anxious suspension, and the end of the decade inexorably drew near.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where we start deviating from my 2009 publication. Ch 16 in the original version spanned from '65-'75 with an episode incl Dan in the middle. I broke up 16 into two parts in this revised version, replacing the interaction with Dan with a completely different scenario which we'll see in the new chapter 17.


	17. Open Wounds, c. '67

I was dreaming; I had a dream that Walter and I were on an island, a real, tropical, sun-in-your-face and sand-in-your-ass island. Not Manhattan, where the closest thing I had to a slushy margarita was an Orange Julius and vanilla ice cream. 

We were on a beach, littered with waste: stained Playboys, Marlboro butts, bullet shells. A wide stream of bright red blood cut a path from the jungle to the ocean, carrying Walter’s new face with it. And when Walter turned back to look at me holding his hand, it was Rorschach, only Rorschach who looked back. The blots flared red and an alarm sounded in that moment, but it wasn’t blaring, it was ringing, ringing like a payphone.

I woke up to this ringing and it took me several long solid moments to realize that it was my phone in the kitchen.

I looked at the clock. 12:52 am.

It took another moment to register as I squeezed shut my eyes in a painful radiance, cursing away the sleep.

There was only one reason my phone would be ringing at this hour.

I sighed heavily, bolted out of bed, ran downstairs, and grabbed the receiver from the floor.

“Hello?” I exhaled.

“Uh, hi,” said the voice. Male, young. Was this a prank? He asked for me by name.

I was leery. There was always the possibility that someone could have found out who I was in relation to Walter’s alter-ego. “It is, who is this?” But deep down I knew. I knew when I sprinted down the stairs instead of taking them one at a time. I knew the second he spoke again through the static.

“Our, uh, _ mutual acquaintance _is in bad shape here. Really hate asking this because I’m going to get a lot of flack for it, but do you think you can come out here?”

“Shit - 

(he chuckled at this)

“ - Yeah, I’ll get dressed now.”

“I’ll order you a cab. See you soon.”

Click and dial tone.

I didn’t even get a chance to give this man my address. And how did he have my number? Did he pry it from Walter’s… well, in this case, from Rorschach’s seething utterances, as I could only imagine no kind words would be exchanged tonight.

And for the Nite Owl to contact me? What did he imply by ‘bad shape’? 

Several long minutes later, I had changed my clothes with shaking hands, purposefully donning items that would not be missed, and impatiently waited in my kitchen under the flickering bulb for the cab to arrive. 

The secrets held within these walls were not kind to their years. Wallpaper peeled with every curse, pipes creaked in response to hushed tones, and the floorboards revolted footsteps with each white lie. Every time I sat at this table and looked at the empty chair across from me, I played the years over and over in my head. They were overwhelmingly good, as good as our relationship could get given the restrictions that Rorschach needed to place on it.

Walter had met the Nite Owl a couple years ago now, and just a year prior to that was when he had revealed the mask to me. Before that, before any of this, he was just Walter Kovacs, an unobtrusive, albeit damaged, man I had fallen for deeply. And that hadn’t changed over the years. Things became more difficult, and the complicated and treacherous balancing act had begun among his work, his life with me (when he could spare the time), and Rorschach’s mission.

A car horn disturbed my thoughts. The cab.

Not even five minutes later, for no traffic crept the city at this hour, and the drunkards were polite enough to keep to their alleys and sidewalks so as to not be disposed of under worn tire treads and mixed with sodden roadkill, I stood on the concrete steps of the man I had previously tried to guilt Walter into letting me meet.

I was nervous. Tired, worried, anxious, something similar to the day Walter first told me about Rorschach and all the unknowns flooded beneath my eyelids, all the ‘if’s and ‘what’s and - 

I heard my name.

I hadn’t even realized the door was open, lost as I was in a new set of ‘if’s and ‘what’s.

The man before me, framed by the bright domestic lighting, was young, at least five years younger than Walter and myself, and still half-costumed in his… bird suit. He took his name seriously.

He beckoned me in, as one would usher in a naive drug dealer from the pouring rain and police headlights, and locked the door behind me.

“Dan Dreiberg, pleasure,” he said with a grin and an outstretched hand. He was a young eager professional, hoping to impress.

I shook his hand, half-forcing a smile, unable to meet the exuberance he failed at masking. “He’s going to hurt you for this. And for telling me your real name.”

Dan’s eyes widened. After another moment, he caught my jest but added, “You’re probably right. Too late now!”

I dropped his hand and my eyes wandered around the highly-furnished condominium. Hell of a lot better than either of our places. This man had money.

“Where - where is he?” I was weary and perhaps not as frightened as I should have been. Dan’s lack of urgency dissuaded any guilt feebly kicking at my heart.

“Yes, let’s get back down there,” he said as if forgetting why we were standing here. “He’s being stubborn.”

I couldn’t help but laugh through my nostrils as I followed him through the first floor and down into the basement, sharply aware of the stairs’ creaking that announced my arrival. A steel staircase broke open to a huge tunnel with tables, instruments, extra costumes, and a giant ship shaped like a goddamn owl.

And on a steel gurney down among the switchboards, tools, and who-knows-what-else, was Walter - 

_ Rorschach _

\- dripping blood from an open torso wound on his left side into the concrete. He was in his wife-beater scrunched up around his pectorals; it looked like they had shed the other items of his suit just outside the ship. A trail of blood led to the table.

“Jesus fuck,” I whispered, running down to catch up with Dan.

“Shouldn’t be here,” Rorschach grunted.

“It’s too late now,” I said. Blood from the wound had dried and meshed with his skin tone.

“What happened to keeping pressure on that!” Dan yelled.

Another grunt from under the blood-stained mask. “Go home.”

“You know me better than that,” I said, slipping my bag off my shoulder. Thank goodness I had grabbed a spare set of clothes for him before I left.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” I added.

“Can’t see my face,” Rorschach said.

“Don’t need to,” I said. I rolled up my sleeves, bathed my arms in sanitizer, grabbed a wad of gauze patches within eyesight as Dan was preparing to clean and stitch up the laceration, and -

_ gently _

\- slapped them against the open wound, holding down to try and stop the bleeding.

I looked up at Dan, who was already in a state of defeat, needle and thread hanging at his sides.

“It had stopped when I went upstairs to get you,” he said to me. “Rorschach, what did you do?”

I just had to chuckle at that. Despite the severity of what was happening here - 

“Oh for fucks sake, did you dislocate your arm, too?” I exclaimed. I had just noticed the bruising at his shoulder.

“Already fixed that on the ship,” Rorschach grumbled. He huffed again as I shifted my hands on his side. “You’re getting dirty, shouldn’t be here, didn’t want you to see this.”

“As you’ve said. And you can stop repeating yourself because I’m not going anywhere…. Can you please relax and breathe for me so we can get you stitched up?”

Dan sighed and shook his head. He was probably getting a kick from this domestic squabble.

“What the hell happened?” I asked to the air near Dan.

Dan looked at me with wide eyes and was about to say something when Rorschach silenced him with a very harsh utterance of his name.

I bit my tongue. No more questions for now. Dan shook his head at me and just sighed.

“I think it’s my turn,” he said.

I lifted away the gauze, blood still pooling over and Dan went to work. I tossed aside the bloody fabric, and looked around the tunnel, hoping to spot somewhere to clean up.

“Have blood on your shirt,” Walter said. Even with Dan beginning to poke him through with a needle, I could tell he wasn’t grimacing. I could just tell. I ran a hand over the side of his face through his mask, inadvertently smearing blood over the fabric.

“We’ll clean this when Dan is done,” I said. 

There was a washbasin along the far wall where I rinsed off my hands, scrubbing as best I could to clean up. I was used to his blood. Though often it was not a _ pool _dripping from my fingertips but drops transferred during sex when I gripped his back too hard and opened an old scratch - knife wound, slash, stab - and he’d admonish me for dirtying myself. And each time I would just chuckle and kiss him harder to shut up.

I was so lost in my thoughts for a moment my hands were now burning red. I shut off the faucet, quickly dried off, and returned to the table, cursing myself for my inappropriate distraction.

Dan was still meticulously sewing up the wound and I got another piece of gauze to wipe up as he worked, standing beside him as he bent over, more careful this time to keep the blood on the fabric and not my flesh.

Walter’s breathing had finally slowed; one would think he was an experienced biker receiving his next gang tattoo. It was just another day…

That thought scared me. It was just another day.

He could tell I was thinking. “I’ve had worse.”

That did not make me feel better.

“Anything else we need to worry about?” I asked, looking down at him, the blots barely moving.

Walter didn’t answer. Dan was still focused on finishing up the stitches but finally replied, “Um, nope, but some morphine wouldn’t hurt.”

“No drugs, Daniel. You know that,” Rorschach said.

“Yeah yeah, I know,” Dan sighed.

The gauze was soaked through but I hadn’t pulled it up yet, simply watching Dan work. How could this not be the worse they’ve seen? What other bruises or scars am I not remembering, or misremembering? The gaps between his visits, was it because of things like this? Because he was healing out of my sight, not having to explain the ‘how’s and ‘why’s, not wanting to receive my frowns?

I stopped frowning a long time ago. I had to smile for him. I had to in place of a truthful response. I knew the answers to my questions; I simply never wanted to hear them.

Dan stood up, breaking me away from my thoughts again. I wiped up the last smear of blood from Walter’s skin, gripping the fabric tightly as I looked at the new pattern on his mask (_ face _). A tree was flipping me off.

“We need to bandage this up,” I said, turning to look at Dan. “Can you prop him up and I’ll wrap?”

Several grunts and curses later, another smear on my blouse, Walter’s torso was wrapped in gauze, another fabric I’m sure he was no stranger to.

“Think we’re done here,” Dan said. “I’ll clean up.”

“No, no,” I said, reaching out a hand in offering. “You’ve done more than enough. Head upstairs so I can check under his mask. I’ll take care of things down here.”

He looked at me for a moment, pondering, but accepted this would be the best compromise to conclude the night.

“All right. Well, you’re welcome to come back up when you’re done.”

I nodded a thank you and watched him take the stairs until the door clicked behind him, signaling our safety.

I turned back to Rorschach and he said my name, reaching up a hand.

“What?” I asked.

“Your face. Come here,” he said. 

I bent down slightly, looking at his mask where his eyes would be. The blots were nearly still. He reached out with the arm that had been dislocated, drew his thumb along my cheek, and smeared off a small smattering of blood I hadn’t even felt. 

“Tainted something beautiful,” he said.

I smiled weakly, pulled back, wiped my hands on my skirt, and slowly peeled up the mask.

He let out a quick sigh, not one of exhaustion or pain, but of relief. The mask was not for my eyes, that identity was for the unashamed and unrelenting world, which excluded me.

His left eye was shut, covered with a thick deep bruise, swollen.

“Goddammit, Walter,” I sighed. This was reminiscent of my students stapling their hands to the wall. Again.

“Why I didn’t want you to see this. I don’t like feeling like I’m in trouble.” He had to turn his head slightly to see me out of his good eye.

I just shook my head. “You’re not in trouble. But, we’re going to have to talk about this. I need you to rest. I’m going to clean your mask and your face, then head upstairs for a bit.”

“Don’t talk to Daniel.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I sighed. “I’m not going to say anything personal.”

I headed back to the sink before he could admonish me again. Days like this had grown so tiresome over the years. Another bruise, another scar, a broken hand once. I had tried to keep my promise early on that I wouldn’t ask questions, but this evidence had become too frequent and apparent that the realities between Rorschach and Walter were blurred. It went against his life of black and white, good and evil. Lies of omission were still lies, and I was tired of it. But he would tell me this was him protecting me from Rorschach, and I used to accept that. 

The blood seeped out of the mask under the running water until it was crisp again. I ran my hands along the inside and out, my thumbs followed the blots as they moved around my hands. I had been scared of this thing at the beginning, that it would take him over. In a way, it had. Walter couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror since that day several years ago, and he made this mask to give him something acceptable to look at instead. And in turn, I accepted it because he had good intentions. He was so ashamed of society, he needed to do something about it. To clean it up.

I washed out his mask and returned to him with a clean rag I grabbed from the sink. He was silent as I blotted his face of the dried blood and sweat, careful not to touch his eye. 

“You don’t have to do this,” he grumbled.

“I want to.” I finished my careful dabbing and tossed the rag among the blood-soaked gauze which I would collect later.

“Walter, I need to know if this was worth it,” I said. Mask still in one hand, I ran my fingertips along his stomach, eyes following. “Will you tell me?”

A small frown creased his lips and he shut his other eye and sighed again.

That plum of a bruise would take a while to go down and perhaps because of the hour, the exhaustion, seeing him like this, I felt the undeniable to urge to sit down and cry. I couldn’t let him see that. I hid that truth from him just as he hid the truth of tonight’s events from me.

All is fair?

I trailed my fingers from his stomach to the hand at his side and up his forearm. I placed the mask near his head on the gurney and turned away, making to go upstairs.

“It was a gang,” he said. “We were tracking them for a while. Heroin. Thought we had knocked them all out. Dan was heading back to the ship, I was tying up the last one for the police. Except he wasn’t the last one. Took me by surprise, I was stupid to let it happen.” He turned his head to look at me the best as possible. “Dan came back too late, asshole got away. Got me on the ship. Called you.”

I turned back to look at him. “How did he get my number? How did he know who I was?”

He coughed and didn’t reply.

“Walter.”

“Inside my coat, left side.”

I walked back over to the ship where the rest of his garments had been discarded in the chaos. I crouched down, set the hat aside, and riffled through his coat until I found a hidden pocket. Inside was a small, slightly thick, folded piece of paper. My number was on one side. Turning it over, I smiled. A smile that finally burst open those tears I had been suppressing for so long.

I collapsed to one hip, sitting on the concrete, this small portrait photo of myself in one hand, the other clasped over my mouth to stifle the sobs.

(_ We also didn’t want Daniel rushing back down to see what had happened this time. _)

When I finally found the air to calm myself, I stood, the photo still in hand, and walked back over to Walter, kissing him as deeply as I could through trembling lips without causing any more pain to his face. My leftover tears stained his cheeks as I pulled away, wiped my face with a hand, and caressed his good side.

“Did you break into the school before picture day? Is this why I had to retake? This photo is from when we started dating! You’ve had it this whole time?”

“Yes. And yes,” he said.

“Walter...why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You ask too many questions,” he said, coughing. “Ice pack would be nice.”

I sighed, shaking my head, again deflated. “Of course,” I said. I went back to his coat to return the photo and headed upstairs where Dan was sitting in the living room, now changed into civilian clothes. He snapped around when he heard me ascend.

“Everything okay down there?”

“Yeah,” I said, well aware that I was flushed. “He’s uh, pretty beat up on the left side of his face. Can’t see out of that eye. I wanted to find him an ice pack, do you have something?”

“I do,” he said, standing. He came around and led me to the kitchen, where he popped several ice cubes into a towel, spinning it into a knot. “Best I can do for now,” he said, handing it to me.

“Thanks,” I said. I quickly turned back to finish up with Walter before Dan could say another word; I knew he must be burning with questions and his eyes had flitted over my face.

When I emerged back into Dan’s lair, Walter was sitting on the floor against the table, hand on his side. I ran up to him, yelling his name and knelt down, slapping the towel to his face. He took it from me with a grimace and held it against his eye.

“What the _ fuck _ did you think you were doing? Dan just stitched you up and you’re down here?”

He gave me that look, that _ don’t-you-dare _look, which I was much too much used to but was also now immune to, much to his chagrin.

“You tell me you got _ stabbed_, I see your blood all over this floor.. Why can’t you just stay still?”

“Why don’t you listen? Go home.”

“Why do you keep telling me to leave? You need to _rest_. And if you want to do it on hard concrete, then fine, Walter.” I slapped my knees and stood, pushing out a deep sigh from my abdomen. Suppressed anger was beginning to swell in my chest. I had to calm it. He didn’t deserve that right now.

I looked down at him, trying to control my voice this time and said, “I’m glad you told me what happened. But this can’t be the last time you tell me. We can’t do this anymore, you can’t… hide these things anymore. What if Dan hadn’t called? Would you have stayed here until you were healed? Hiding from me? Would you have come home and just brush it off again? I can’t just pretend anymore. I won’t. I’m tired and I don’t need protecting from what you do. I know what you do and I support every inch of it and I just-” 

I had to pause to catch my breath. I was flushed and he was looking at some indiscriminate point on the floor. “I’m going upstairs. I’ll come back down to check on you later.”

He didn’t respond or make to stop me. I headed back up to find Dan again in his living area. I collapsed next to him, barely bothering to smooth down my clothes, I was so tired. Dan probably didn’t even know where to start. He was looking at me, curious, astonished, worried perhaps. I was visibly agitated.

“Just ask me, Dan,” I said, resting my head in my hands, elbows on knees.

“Um… so, how long have you two uh... known each other?”

“Several years,” I said, sitting back to lean against the cushions. I looked at Dan from the corner of my eye. “I knew him before...before the mask. That so hard to believe?”

“Just never figured he’d be one to have a girlfriend.”

I laughed at that term. “Oh, trust me, that is not a word we use. It’s better left unlabeled, I suppose.”

“How do you do it?”

I paused before answering, wondering that myself. “Love. Love and…. belief that this is the right thing for him to do,” I said. “Oh _ shit _.” I bolted up and looked down at the cushions. “Am I getting his blood on your furniture?”

He laughed like he was used to hearing that question. “No, no, even if you are, don’t worry about it. Sit back down,” he beckoned.

I did, hesitantly, careful this time to at least pull my skirt over so the spot where I had wiped my hand on myself didn’t touch anything.

“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you afford all this? Everything you have down there?” I asked.

“Oh, my father was in banking and left me his fortune when he died. It was a shocker since he didn’t really support any of _that_,” he said, waving his hand towards the basement.

“Well, I’m glad. Glad that Rorschach found you.”

“He’s a good partner. We’re doing a lot of good together out there.”

“Good.”

“Hey, you really don’t have anything to worry about. Tonight was… that’s not a typical night.”

“He said it wasn’t the worst.”

“Yeah, that’s uh, that’s probably not for me to say. Look, I know he wants to keep things separated for you, and I can’t disrespect that. So, if he wants to tell you, he will. Or just ask, I don’t know how things work between you two and it’s not my place to give relationship advice, especially from a single guy like me.”

I smiled weakly. I liked Dan, in the hour or so since being here, I could tell he was a good partner for Walter. He seemed more level-headed, logical, careful. I knew we could not be friends after this, that this could not become a norm. The girlfriend and the best friend were not allowed to know each other for there could be a hushed element of _cheating _between them.

“Dan,” I looked at him squarely. “Why did you call me?”

He didn’t answer at first, eyes darting around the room, searching for his reply.

He finally returned my gaze and turned to place his head on a hand, elbow on the cushions. “Because I found that photo of you in his pocket when I was patting him down for wounds and I... I wanted to. He obviously cares for you enough to curse me out before, during, and after I made the call. Maybe I was being selfish. I wanted to know more about him, figured the best way would be through his girl. I’m sorry if I made the wrong choice.”

I shook my head gently. “He’ll never let you live it down and I have an argument to return to-”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I shouldn't say that …. I’m glad you called. I think - we needed this to happen. I... needed it to happen. You want to talk about selfish?” I felt tears pulling on the backs of my eyes again.

“Hey, no need for that now. He’ll get mad if he thinks I made you cry.”

I had to laugh again. “Probably.” I wiped my hands along my face and slouched further down into the cushions.

“So, what do you do for a living?” he asked.

I looked over at him, studying his face for a moment, considering. It was an innocent enough question. “I’m a grade school teacher. What about you? Is uh, crime-fighting all you do?”

“Research, primarily. If you couldn’t guess, I really like birds.”

“Who would have thought?” 

We both smiled before I returned my gaze to his decor. I had to be careful. I knew in another life perhaps I could be friends with this man, but I was not Walter. I couldn’t separate my lives and a friendship with Dan... that was a life for another time. I felt a pang of sadness that needed quenching immediately.

“Do you mind if I just sit here for a while?” I asked.

“No, no not at all. Whatever you need,” he said. He stood, motioning towards the hall. “I'll be upstairs if you need anything.”

I looked up at the man, praying I could have a real conversation with him one day, instead saying, “Thank you. For everything. I mean it.”

“Yeah. Sure. Hey, if you can convince Rorschach to come up, there’s a spare bedroom on the second floor. Or, any piece of furniture down here. But, I doubt it. He usually sleeps in Archie.”

I nodded, a slow_ is-that-what-he-does _ nod. Honestly, I figured as much. If not with me, then here with Dan, maybe back at his own apartment some nights.

“Thank you,” I said. Dan nodded, seemingly hesitant to turn away as he held my tired eyes for another moment before retiring upstairs, at least for the time.

I relished the silence, the soft furniture, the lingering smell of an early dinner.

I sat in silence, alone, for several long minutes for I did not want to become too comfortable and doze off. But I needed to give Walter some time as well and so I simply sat, head in hands until I mustered the strength to return downstairs, not knowing what I may see.

As expected, Walter was nowhere to be seen and the ice was on the gurney, dripping to the floor to mix with the blood. He had moved again. I didn’t run, I didn’t rush. A deeply hidden part of me wanted to say _ fuck it _and have a beer with the best friend, have a normal life, have a boyfriend who could speak the truth… my heart broke in those lying late night thoughts. 

I pushed out a deep sigh and looked around at the evidence of tonight.

I told Dan I would clean up, so I did. I returned to the basin and found a mop, rinsed the floor and swept what I could into the tunnel tracks surrounding Archie to be absorbed by the dark, disappearing into the underbelly of a city which knew nothing of what occurred here tonight. I wiped down the table and collected all the trash into a bin near the sink and scrubbed my hands again.

I walked to the edge of the tracks and looked down the tunnel before it faded to darkness, wondering where it let out, how much of a walk to the surface from here, and who would be on the other side?

I returned and stepped up into the ship where Walter was sitting on the floor against the opposite side, hand against the bandages. He looked up at me blankly as I entered then back to the floor. I kicked off my shoes, sat down to his right side, and wrapped a hand around the back of his head to thread through his hair.

“Lay down,” I said.

He hesitated but maneuvered - with only one grunt of pain - to lay his head in my lap. I placed my hand over his own on the wound, another in his hair. We stayed like this for a while in silence, my fingers absently making circles on his scalp as I half-heartedly looked around the ship then back out into the basement. I was so tired. Exhaustion hit me like a bird on Archie’s windshield at 700 feet.

“Walter.”

A grunt.

“I’m sorry. For earlier, for snapping at you like that. You do so much, go through so much, the last thing you need is to have a shit night like this and then for me to be shit, too. That wasn’t right.”

Another grunt, softer. I gave us several minutes of silence before I spoke again. “He said he had a room upstairs for us. I think we should try if you can stand.”

“Fine like this,” he grunted. His fingers twitched between his wound and my palm. A few moments later, without meeting my eyes above his, he said, “Shouldn’t have told you to leave. You’re too stubborn. I know you can handle this. But I need - I need you to be separate from this. Need to be able to come back to you, and leave this behind. I just don’t know how. I try. But I don’t know how.”

“How to what?”

Tell me. How to be with me. How to balance these lives. I remembered his words when we first started this _something_.

_ I can’t… be anyone but this. Like this. _

When he didn’t respond, I asked, “Will you … will you at least tell me what the worst was, if this wasn’t it?”

Again, he didn’t immediately, and tilted his head on my lap to absently gaze out the hatch.

“Do you remember last year, you noticed I had a new coat?”

I did. I hadn’t seen him for weeks and had only received a couple phone calls that things were busy. He didn’t specify what things, he didn’t have to. And then with no forewarning, he returned, but instead of letting himself into my apartment with his key, he knocked on the front door.

I was startled from a late nap to find him standing in the rain. He took the hat off his head when he saw me, looked up at me with such tragedy behind his eyes, and just whispered, ‘I’m sorry’.

I begged him in and enveloped him in the tightest embrace, so grateful that he was not dead. I couldn’t even be angry that night. I asked him what had happened, why hadn’t I heard from him. I don’t recall precisely when I noticed the new coat, but it was enough of a factor that he didn’t answer my questions and barely said a word to me that night.

I sighed, remembering. “It was the same night that we were finally intimate after a couple months. You were so despondent. You showed me that scar on your back. You hadn’t been staying over and I was starting to wonder if...if you didn’t want this anymore.”

“Grappling hook.”

“The hook caused that? Walter, I don’t… it’s a nasty scar, but nothing worse than this tonight. Was it? Who did it?”

“Crime was petty. Guy just wanted our gear. Bad part is that it was stolen from me. Worst part is what you just said. Almost lost you because I wasn't there, wouldn't tell you what happened. You took it personally and I didn’t say anything to fix that. I never even tried. One week turned into two, I lost track. I was ashamed. Ashamed of not telling you. Of making you worry. Even after we… you weren’t happy. And I ignored it.”

“It’s been a rough year,” I said. I could fall asleep right here on the cold steel flooring if it wasn’t for his words. “You stopped staying over, saying you were busy with things, and when you finally revealed that scar, that only answered part of the question. You didn’t want me to see it fresh. Why hide it, why… I thought those awful things. I wondered if it was us, that something was wrong with us.”

I had the answer to my own question. Because I shouldn’t have been thinking those things in the first place, and that’s what he had assumed. What he had _known_. And I never knew how to broach the subject of how uncomfortable I had become without causing more confusion, without hurting him, without breaking my promise that I would just _be _there for him in silence. That if he didn’t want our _ something _anymore…

He looked up at me and said my name, “I would tell you if that was it. There’s nothing wrong with us. Just me. I fucked up. I was pulling away. Kept convincing myself you didn’t need to know.”

How do we hold on? I didn’t know what to do. How to make him believe me, year over year.

“I was afraid. I don’t want to lose you to this. This other life. And if Dan hadn’t called, would that have happened again? I don’t know if I can do that again. I can’t keep that early promise anymore. I really thought I could, but every time I see you, Rorschach is just so apparent. If you need time, then just tell me why. That’s all I ask. Don’t pull away from me. Please.”

I rested my head heavily against the ship, fingers halting their movements in Walter’s hair and closed my eyes for a moment.

He pushed up and away from me to sit shoulder to shoulder against the ship. He took my hand in his and raised it to his lips for a gentle kiss.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “I love you, too.” Things would be okay, they had to be. He struggled with expressing himself, he always has. Which sometimes caused my imagination to wander and horrible thoughts to take over, vines through my brain, pulling at the bits of love he would leave in every nighttime kiss. But I knew, I knew that in his own way, in the best way he could express, he did love me. Even if that love was filled with assumptions instead of promises.

Perhaps fifteen silent minutes later, he stood, barely a wince across his face, and reached down a hand. “Get up,” he said.

I did. I took his hand and we made it to the first floor where he beckoned me to go first. To make sure the coast was clear. All the lights were off and it was dead quiet. I took Walter’s hand again and we found the staircase to the second floor. Still quiet, still dark.

He followed me up, slowly and silently. The kind of biting-lip silence he must have practiced all those times after being hurt. 

At the top of the steps, we paused. I saw a door open a few yards down and the staircase that continued up behind us. He dropped my hand and with a few fingertips to my back indicated I should take a look.

I felt like a naughty schoolchild, slipping away with the extra cookies from atop the refrigerator to hide under my pillow fort.

The open door was the guest bedroom Dan had prepared. I stood in the doorway with a hand held out behind me as I looked around. Queen sized bed, two plain brown side tables, and a chest of drawers along one wall, the window opposite that. I noted that back out at the end of the very short hallway was the bathroom; the cracked door revealing a medicine cabinet indicated it as such.

I stepped in and summoned him to follow. I turned on one of the side table lamps.

“I need to get your things,” I sighed. “Need my bag, too. I have a change of clothes for you.”

He grimaced at the thought of me touching his _face _again.

“You need to rest,” I said. “Please lay down and don’t move, you’re going to tear.” I slipped back out and shut the door quietly behind me before he could say a word.

I turned our conversation over in my head, still wondering what would have happened if Dan hadn’t called. Would it have been another month of silence, of recovering away from me?

I found my way back down to Dan’s lair, pausing at the table where we had worked on Walter just hours prior. I ran light fingers over the mask, lost in its patterns. What did they see when confronted with Rorschach? I gripped it in one hand and walked back to the ship where I had left my shoes, and slipped them back on, at least for now. I stopped again to look around the ship. The seats where they observed the city, bulkheads containing who-knows-what, and large colorful buttons adorning the cockpit.

“Should have a ride with us sometime.”

I whipped around to see Dan standing just outside the door in a night robe and slippers.

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t be lingering in here,” I said. I stepped out to meet him at eye level. “I just had to grab our things.”

“How is he? You managed to convince him to a real bed, I see.”

I laughed through my nose. “We’ll see how long that lasts. He’s fine, all considered.” I paused a moment, considering my next words. “Dan, he told me about the other event. I just need to thank you again. For calling me. But for everything else as well.”

“Don’t thank me too much. I found that photo of you a while ago, on that night he told you about. Flailing like a goddamn psychopath, he didn’t want me contacting you. I shouldn’t have listened. All of this might have been avoided.”

“It’s okay...just need to figure it out from here.”

“I suppose. Hey, there’s soap in the basin over there, feel free to wash your things. Might not want to take the cab ride tomorrow with bloodstains. I’ll be out pretty early, so… you have your run of the place.”

“Thanks.” I went over to grab my bag from the floor where I had dropped it earlier and scooped up his own items. “I hope this doesn’t happen again. That also means I probably won’t see you again as long as things are well. Take care of him for me.”

“Same to you. It was a pleasure.”

I nodded a final goodbye. My plan for the night was to sleep and go home in the morning. Walter didn’t need me here, and I shouldn’t be here. It was one thing to be witness and caretaker for Walter’s wounds, the physical and mental repercussions of his nights out. But to be friends with a man, who could never see Walter’s face, who did not know the man under the face… no. It was forbidden, for both of us.

I returned upstairs and creaked open the bedroom door, half hoping that Walter would be asleep. He was atop the covers - now missing the wife beater, torn aside, I noticed - and propped up on his elbows when I reentered, watching me as I placed everything on top of the small dresser.

“There’s a change of clothes here for you,” I sighed as I slipped off the bag and placed the mask atop. “I’ll help you in the morning.” I kicked my shoes aside and immediately began to strip down and out of the stained clothes.

He laid down flat to stare at the ceiling, hands clasped over his stomach.

I stepped out of the skirt, so thankful that I hadn’t bothered with pantyhose, and flung down my blouse. Bra was next. I didn’t even try to be graceful. Walter coughed. I turned to look at him, his eyes focused upwards.

“I’m not sleeping in any of that,” I said. I stood at the foot of the bed and bent to remove his own footwear. He let me do so without hesitation. Pants would be another issue so I didn't even attempt it.

I rounded the bed to the right side and stretched out beside him on my left, breasts pressed into his arm, my own over his.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“It’s weird. Never came up here.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“You did. You’re right, don’t take care of myself like I should. Don’t sleep well.” He looked at me from the corner of his good eye. “Are you sleeping like that?”

“They're just breasts, Walter. You've seen them before.”

He grunted and after a moment stretched his right arm up and over to pull me in. I readjusted slightly to rest my head against his shoulder and envelop his chest, leg slightly curled up over his own, intertwining as much as possible without hurting him.

I connected his freckles with my fingers, breathing in that accumulated late-night New York City cacophony. Somewhere mixed in was whoever wielded the knife, slightly abated now after the wipe down of blood and sweat from Walter’s face.

He said my name, still looking up at the ceiling.

“Hm?”

“Do you - do you remember our… first night together?”

I pushed up slightly to look at him. “First night or... first..._ time _ together?”

His eye flickered to mine then back to the ceiling and the corners of the room. He cleared his throat. “First time.”

I smiled. “I do remember. I still think about it. Why do you ask?”

“Still surprise myself. That I did that with you. Didn't think I'd like it. But I'm glad. I look forward to it now, I just can't always express that. Or…”

He cleared his throat.

(_ Maintain. _ He would lose interest quickly and we’d lay in a tight embrace until I fell asleep.)

“I know I can be difficult. I'm not always there for you. Not always a good partner.”

“Hey, look at me. I don't want anyone else. You're a wonderful partner, Walter, you need to believe that.”

“You don’t have to lie to me. You were right. If Daniel hadn’t called you, this would have been a repeat. I don’t - I don’t understand why you want to stay with me.”

I pushed myself up further to look down at him properly, fingertips holding his face in one hand, careful to stay away from the bruising.

“I'm with you because I am so completely in love with you, Walter Kovacs. For a lot longer than I even realized. You scared me when we first met. You had such a hatred for the world in your eyes, and I was terrified of coming across as the.. the woman who wanted to fix you. So, instead, I just gave you my business and one day I walked inside, said fuck it, and bought you that coffee, and those lunches and you never told me to shove off so you must not have hated it. But, your view of the world, the despise for it, it’s not misplaced. And you decided to _do _something, to be an active participant and change how things were for the better. I believe in you, I trust your judgment in those fists. And you're not hard on the eyes.”

He snorted and pulled my hand down to hold against his chest. “Couldn’t stand you, wasn’t used to having company, hated it. Must have been early fall, I realized I closed the shop late. Missed my usual train. It’s because I was waiting and you never came. Did that a couple times. Cursed myself for it. I didn't like it. When I agreed to your intrusion… figured it made up for those times I waited. You made me miss you, even without saying anything. Whatever I felt back then, felt like nausea, and it wasn’t going away. Don't know how long it took me to finally call you. Grown man scared of a telephone, downright pathetic. It was the right thing to do. Knew it would make you happy. Innocent act.”

The night he told me he was closing early. I remember being so shocked at something so seemingly mundane, but in our case, it was an act, on his part nonetheless, that told me what I was pursuing was okay and I could keep trying. 

“I remember that. Sometimes I wish we had more time back then. I should have spoken to you sooner,” I said. 

“Not sure I would have liked it any sooner,” he said. 

I pushed myself up as best I could to lay half over him without bothering the bandages and the wound. One hand still clasped between us, the other to run through his hair, I kissed him with the same longing as _that _night. During one breath he uttered, “I’m sorry.” He let go of my hand to push us to our sides, grabbing my thigh to envelop him tighter.

“Going to hurt yourself,” I gasped into the kiss.

He grunted. “Shouldn’t do this here anyway. Not ours,” he said. He broke away completely to lay back, a hand on his side. No blood was seeping.

So we lay in this strange bed, in a strange room, in this lavish home with a rich owner whose basement was the only floor that Walter -

_ Rorschach _

\- ever experienced. I was never supposed to see this place or meet the man who took care of Rorschach, and he was never supposed to meet the woman who knew the man under the mask. I remembered those early nights we had spent in the park together, in blanketing darkness, footfalls covered by fresh snow and no traces of the relationship that had been slowly forming under naked trees. Tentative kisses shared with chilled breaths and shaking fingers entwined in woolen coat pockets. This room would now hold secrets of its current occupants, even from its own master, but I prayed that the secrets would travel with us, that perhaps something else could blossom between us in the next segment of our relationship. I could hope, but as Walter once said, one never knew what might happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New material! Wrote this as a one-shot on my pc a few years ago, decided to incorporate it into AAW.


	18. Event Horizon, c. '67 - '75

That was the last time I saw Dan for almost ten years. I did not see Walter the following night. I did not see him for two weeks. A brief argument ensued in which I accused him of falling back to old habits. But despite the progress I felt we had made over the course of that night, among the three of us, I knew it would never be that easy.

After that night, I forced myself to keep quiet when I was with Walter even if an argument or retort was on the verge of spewing from my lips. We seamlessly fell back into our routine; Walter came to me every so often - sometimes on Dan’s request - for a late meal and sleep. And then after a while, three years maybe, Walter told me not to come to the factory anymore. If I was ever followed home, it wouldn’t be good, I’d be on my own and he wouldn’t be there. 

Dan _was _a good man and although I wished I could visit him again or meet him for dinner - I made it halfway to his home one afternoon before doubling back - I did not belong to that world. Walter would not want me going behind his back to speak to his partner because Dan might say something out of line. I might accidentally reveal something about Walter than Dan should never know. The ego and the alter-ego had to stay separated as well. That was my job, the Nite Owl’s job - to alternately take care of different versions of the same man. But Walter was safe; Dan could keep promises for him. Walter would not die. I fully placed my trust in a man with whom I had barely spent an entire night but it was enough time for me to realize that I could relax and experience the same scene of _ knowing _that I had always felt. A deep knowing in the pit of my gut that I still had a reason to love a man despite barely seeing him anymore. I was not as important as the whole of the city. I had insisted that this be the way. _ Demanded, _ despite everything my selfish mind and heart desired, that he forget me at night. I would not transgress my own request. No, not until the summer of 1975.

* * *

* * *

“Will you come back tomorrow night? I haven’t cooked for you in so long. Does Dan need you for anything?”

Shallow breath accompanied light swirling fingertips on my back. Silence answered my curiosity.

* * *

I made myself dinner that night, stashing leftovers in the freezer in case Walter wanted any the next time he came around. I went to the school for a few workdays to occupy myself - I had received a job at the city high school where I saw many of the same students I once taught on the elementary level. The week passed into the next and still no Walter. Typical except that two weeks drew into three … and then into four … and then I was scared.

I went to his apartment on a Friday afternoon only to learn from his landlady that he had moved and left no forwarding address. On Saturday, I went to his workplace and found his supervisor. Walter had quit a week ago. I tried to make sense of it. _ Quit? No, no, he couldn’t have quit. What is he going to do for money? Rent? Dan. Dan might know something. _

From the factory I ran, impatient and blind, my heart beating uncontrollably with confusion and painful distress. Dan was not home. _ Out. He’s just out _. I waited for hours outside and around his building, starting whenever I thought I saw someone approaching from a distance. When Dan saw me, he halted mid-step, a bag of groceries heavy in his arms. Slowly, he came up to me, not daring to look into my eyes as he unlocked his door and allowed me to follow him in.

I stood, waiting. He knew why I was here.

“Nice to see you again,” he said, tossing his keys on the kitchen table. “Would you like-”

“Dan….”

“I can’t. You know I can’t. He - Something happened to him and he changed. Haven’t seen him myself in a few days. If he hasn’t contacted you, there’s probably a very good reason.”

“Reason? What reason? He moved and quit his job! There’s a reason for that but why didn’t I know about it? Did _you _know? Dan, please!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sighing deeply. “I wish I could help you this time. The best thing you could do is just sit and wait, but don’t go searching for him…. Look, it’s probably for your own good. He managed to keep you away from Rorschach and you’ve been dealing fine ever since he made that damn mask.”

“So just like that. One night and he changed his mind about everything.”

“Now I don’t know that, so calm down and listen to me. I haven’t seen Rorschach recently. He went off by himself one night, stating ‘personal reasons’ that I couldn’t come out with him. But I can’t tell you anything else. Next time we’re out, I’ll tell him you came by and I’ll try to suggest to him that he go see you, but…” He trailed off, shrugging and shaking his head, sincerely sorry that he could not offer me more.

“If something happened … I won’t be afraid to see him. He knows that.”

“You say that now. But I hope for both your sakes that you never see each other again. He’s defiant to the bone as you well know. Respect his reasons, even if you don’t ever figure them out.”

A tremble had reached my fingertips and I was trying my hardest to comprehend everything Dan had just told me. I was searching his eyes for something, some indication as to what could have possibly happened, if he was telling me the truth or saying what I needed to hear.

“It’s probably also best that you don’t come by here again…. Look, I’m really sorry. I’m the one that has to put up with his shit now. Maybe you’ll see him on the street if he’s not careful; you know what he looks like, not me.”

Dan stepped to open the door.

“I have no reason to blame you,” I choked.

“No, you do. I could’ve been there to help him.”

I nodded and managed a weak trembling smile before he shut the door behind me.

There was nothing left to do. I could search every street and alleyway but Walter would only disappear the moment I neared.

What had happened?

What could have possibly happened to him?

Not dead, no. _ He changed_, Dan said. How, why, what did that mean?

I was dimly aware of the taxis that sped past me and pedestrians going about their daily lives. They had goals, significant others to go home to, children, pets, they had jobs and TV shows to watch, news to read. I stood on the doorstep of a stranger now, no one knew who lived here, no one knew who we were to each other, who our common acquaintance was…. I stood and waited, jumbled words and images from the past ten years resurfacing in my mind, melting together like a collage on a bedroom wall that would only make sense if I paused and took a step back.

I was in love with a man and could do nothing about it because this time, he was gone.


	19. Soft Words of Former Days, Winter '75

_ Rorschach’s Journal _

_1975 _

_Do not want to know what day it is. Do not want to remember what happened on this day over ten years ago. I was not myself. Always hiding, feigning, thinking. This city saw things that I hope it has long forgotten. This park held occupants that have not been together since _

(_ Since? Since what? Since when? _)

He scratched out a few words.

_T__his park held occupants that once loved_.

He growled at that term.

_ The night was once a silent comforting witness to forms who knew that the world would hold their hearts and minds steady for as long as their lives whispered ‘Yes.’ But the world has rotated once again and I will stay here. Suppressing these thoughts that have swelled and leaked when I was not careful. I must be careful now because I was not before. _

_ She knew him. _

_ She knew me. _

Rorschach sat in the heavy bleak shadows of Central Park, on a path that was now littered with garbage and rot and decay. It had not always looked like this. People were getting careless. Or maybe he had never noticed all of the filth and muck so clearly before. He saw the world in stark contrast to the way he had once seen it not so long ago.

_ Dirtied, clouded, distracted, always distracted. No more distraction. For the best. _

He tucked away the leather-bound book in his coat, relieved to find he had nothing else to write for now.

He wanted to forget, tried to, tried to so hard it hurt, and when it hurt he went out and found someone who needed to be punished for their wrongs. He always believed that he might feel better after doing this. He never did. Sometimes he lost focus and hurt one too many men when he was out with Dan. He attributed this carelessness to exhaustion, too many nights out. Too many nights out because there was still a strain connecting Rorschach to Walter Kovacs. The strain that feared to see _her _again.

But it was still early - only five, six months have passed. He had not been found yet, even as he hid in plain sight during the day. He never saw anyone he recognized. He had been lucky. Except for tonight. He must have slipped up. Must have left a trail. Dan must have seen her, led her to this place.

Rorschach came to the Park because it was a good place to write and watch for rapists and murderers who lurked under the bridges.

She came here to remember.

He saw her. The woman in the long dark green coat with the floppy belt at her waist. Her hands were buried deep in her pockets, arms tight to her slender form. A thick dark skirt swayed around her legs; her heels sloshed through the muddy rainwater, crunching lifeless leaves and rotting apple cores from a local stand under her feet. Her short dark bobbed hair blew into her face with the gusts of chilling winter wind. She never bothered to brush the strands from her bright green eyes that now stopped to read the headline of a newspaper that had been flung on a bench.

She would see him soon if he did not move. Only months since she had seen him like this and she had not been afraid. 

_ She will fear me now_.

It was late, close to midnight, and he wondered why she was out. _ Not safe, go home_. She was never out. She had no reason to be out. _ Why, where is she going_? He trailed her, staying in the darkness, occasionally darting into the shadow of a light post if he thought she was about to turn around.

Rorschach was driven by pure curiosity and a need to know her purpose. He followed her deeper into the Park along familiar paths and past benches where only days ago murders had been committed. There were still spots of blood on the thin metal armrests and the rotting wooden seats. 

Long minutes passed on end and he suddenly stepped on something hard. Not a rock. Glass, perhaps. He stopped, making sure that she would not leave his sight, and looked down, head cocked, curious. He lifted his heel away from the asphalt. Something that had probably once been shiny and colorful was now dim and scratched. 

She stopped at a bench several yards ahead, staring into the dead trees. Was she considering sitting? _ Rest, rest is good. _

He crouched down to examine the ground and the thing he had trod upon.

A dull metal protrusion lay an inch away from a thin piece of gold. The gold was shaped like something but he could not tell what unless he examined the other side.

It was a pin.

Two gloved fingers emerged from a clenched fist to turn over the little object.

The pin.

The little boy.

The redheaded boy.

_ ‘I thought you would like it.’ _

The pail was scratched up, there was a smudge on his hair.

_ ‘Open it.’ _

Rorschach stared. The blots on his face became contorted, imageless, broken. His finger was still on the pin, on the little boy’s black-shoed feet.

This … he gave this to her … a long time ago. When he was someone else.

_ ‘Walter, this is adorable.’ _

He heard their voices in his head. He tried shaking them free, tried to shake free the blurred image of her face and her smile.

He scratched his cheek where she had stained him with her lips so many times.

He heard her utter a harsh curse, his head snapping up; she had noticed that the pin had fallen from her coat and was about to search for it. She cursed again, frantically looking around her feet. He tried to dart behind the nearest evergreen but most of the trees were dead and he grunted as he slid behind a boulder for cover.

She stopped, frightened, cautious.

He crouched down as far as he could as she slowly and meticulously retraced her steps. Peering around the rock, he watched her approach along the path and held his breath behind his face.

She stopped only feet away, noticed the pin that had dropped from her collar, and bent to reattach it to the thick fabric at her neck. As she stood back up, the woman said his name, his real name.

“Rorschach. I know you’re there. Don’t pretend. I can feel you’re there.”

She did not turn to look at him, standing with arms tightly crossed from the cold. Any potential passersby would only think that she was waiting for someone.

She spoke slowly, carefully; she wanted him to hear every word. “I never thought I’d get the chance to talk to you again. I’m always asleep when you’re outside my window, thinking, wondering. You’re like … a squeamish family member trying to identify a dead body through the floor above the morgue in a hospital. You wonder if you even have memories of me.

“Don’t come out. You won’t anyway, will you, even if I asked. You’d run the moment I turned to look at the rock you’re hiding behind.

“You said once that you hoped I’d never have to see you with the mask on. I did, though. That was before you disappeared. That’s when you were still Walter Kovacs, part-time tailor by day and the man I cared for by night.”

She kicked away a pebble with a hard toe. Her words, they held something. Something he didn’t understand.

She continued, “I see you sometimes, did you know? With that sign. Didn’t think so, did you? God,” she laughed, “what do you do for food? For money? Where do you live? I would give you all of that and more. Everything. I don’t know what happened to you. I wish I knew. Does your partner know? He wouldn’t tell me after you disappeared. He was protecting you. What if I went back to him now? If there was a way-”

“Don’t.” _ Shouldn’t have spoken_.

She snapped her head to the side and he could see tears glistening on her cheeks in the moonlight. _ Snow. Yes. Snow is melting on her face, I just do not see it fall_.

Had he done that? Could he fix it?

She took a step forward.

“Don’t,” he growled.

“I won’t touch you. You can kill me if I do. You can run if I say something you don’t want to hear. I expect nothing. I haven’t. You ran. You’re not _him _anymore and maybe I should have seen it coming. I don’t know. I stayed out of Rorschach’s life when he was still Walter. I’ve stayed out of Rorschach’s life after Walter died. I listened to you finally. I can’t blame you for anything. I blame myself for listening to you, though, for never interfering. I’ve wondered if I _ could _have done anything but Walter only ever refused. And I let him be because I loved him and the city needed Rorschach more than Walter ever needed me. Is that wrong?” She paused. “No,” she whispered, “… He _did _need me.

“Is there-” She took another step forward. “-_ anything _you can tell me? Even a lie would be okay…”

She was shivering. It had begun to flurry and her hot puffs of breath evaporated into the air. If he didn’t move or say anything, she would stay there and wait for him. 

That’s all she ever did. Wait. She waited for the school day to end so she could visit Walter at the shop. She waited for the weekend to bring him lunch at the factory. She waited to fall asleep so he would knock on her front door with bruises and bloody hands. Waited for him to stop doubting himself so she could say ‘I love you.’

All he could do was hide behind a mask and behind this boulder, wondering if she would give up and leave him alone.

Rorschach did not want her around.

Walter was gone, but a screaming, piercing desire was kicking and cursing through tired and bloodshot eyes.

Finally, he stood, brushed off his pants, and turned around.

Her face contorted to depict pure sadness and despair. She had realized the truth and reality had not been a kind mistress of comfort.

He stepped over fallen branches and rocks to stand only a foot from her.

The pin had been successfully reattached but was now crooked. At some time over the years, the backing had loosened and would never stand straight again.

Rorschach examined the woman he had once known so well. She was still young but not so alive. Her cheeks had lost their glow, her eye color had faded to match the bleakness of the season. Gray stress hairs dotted the once flawless dark brown tone that framed her face. He wondered if she was still a teacher. Had she given up that life when he left his?

“Can’t be here like this. Not with me,” Rorschach warned.

“Answer me,” she demanded. “Just tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me!” she yelled, daring to take another step forward and lashed out to grip his scarf.

He let her. He took her demands in silence, wondering when she would be done so he could have his say.

“Why couldn’t I help you? If you had just come home one night during those few weeks, and after _everything _ I’ve ever said to you. _ Everything_. Every assurance that I’d be there, that I’d still love you no matter what, that I could be the one stable force…. You apologized so many times during those ten years and I was okay with it. As long as you were alive at the end of the day, I’d be okay. You’re still alive, Walter!”

She made a mistake and she knew it.

“Rorschach,” she mumbled, retracting her hand and taking a step back. “I’ll tell you - one more time -” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I _ always _loved you. I still do. It hasn’t been that long. You’re not _him_, I know. You never will be again. Whatever happened, you don’t have to tell me, I get it. Something in you snapped, you’re too different, I feel it. Something horrible destroyed you but it couldn’t have been a single event. Things accumulate until you snap, weakening….

“I’ve missed you, even if that means nothing now…. I want you to change the world. Do something great…. I just … I wish that …”

There was nothing left for her to wish for.

That last tiny remaining link in Rorschach was aching to reach out to her but he knew this was for the best. She’ll pollute him, divert him, cloud his judgment, waste his time. That’s what women did. Now her words only sounded like helpless pleas, like cries of a girl at the feet of her father.

_ Connie _….

Walter had said that name to himself so many times in so many thoughts and on so many nights. It was a good name for her, so true. Even Dan knew that name but knew never to say it again.

“You were - so much to me. Can you even hear me anymore?” She laughed, more tears swelled. “This is pointless, talking to you. You’re not Walter. I failed Walter -”

“You didn’t. I-” 

(‘_ Rorschach’ _) 

“-was stronger. Nothing you could have done. Don’t blame yourself. I don’t … You … were too good. Warned you-“

“You know how fucking _ sick _ I was with your warnings towards the end. Every couple years you’d say something stupid until you gave up. YOU GAVE UP!”

“To save you.”

“From _ what _?”

“Me. Loved you too much. After that night - Walter died. Rorschach would have never given you a second glance. Not running now. Still here. But you should leave.”

“No, no, I won’t leave, not until I see your face again.”

“Unwise.”

“You know I won’t give up. Now that you’re before my eyes and came out from behind your haven to speak to me …. No, it’s never been that easy with me. I miss you, don’t you believe that? Even now, there’s no way you could have forgotten … suppressed everything.”

He could run. He could cast her aside and walk away with head hung low and shoulders slumped. Fling her away like a doll, like an annoying dog - 

She took a step towards him.

_ ‘Why don’t you get it?’ _

He did not move. “Don’t.”

She reached back out with the hand that had gripped his scarf.

_ ‘Am I really the only person that’s given a shit about you?’ _ He heard her words in a deep echo.

“Don’t touch my face.”

One hand picked his hat from his head, dropping the fedora at their feet. Cold fingers slid to the back of his neck, finding the edge of his face and curled them under the fabric. Rorschach shot up a gloved hand to envelop her slim wrist. He could break it so easily.

“Do you remember the last time you took hold of me like this?” Her eyes were steady, the tears were gone and she stared at him resolutely. She reached out her other hand, five more fingers to aid in revealing Rorschach to the chill night air and to her. 

Another gloved hand gripped the second wrist.

His thoughts were muddled, things were screaming in his head and his eyes were wide beneath his face. His breath caught at the contact but he was not seething. If she was anyone else, he would hurt her, kill her, but that lost bit of Walter was begging, urging for Rorschach not to do those things.

“I am not afraid of you,” she said.

Rorschach did not relinquish his grip, his arms raised as she peeled up the mask, fingertips scraping through his messy hair. He did not like this. In a single motion, she pulled up and off the mask, freeing it from his head and he flung her hands away from him. 

For how long must he stand here, gritting his teeth to prevent harsh words from reaching her ears?

He expected her to smile, expected for her to say something. He was uncomfortable with her unchanged gaze, eyes shifting from one aspect of his face to the next, her hand holding his real face like a silk handkerchief between thumb and forefinger. He was uncomfortable with how close she was, with how he would have felt only months prior to now.

Instead, she shook her head, saying, “You look the same. Somehow. Your eyes always were my favorite feature. It’s a shame you cover them up.” She took a step back and picked up his hat. “I suppose they were only ever for me, huh?” She smiled, so weakly Rorschach was unsure how to respond.

He did not immediately take back his face from her, allowing it to linger, subject to the gusts of wind. If he only took the hat, he would create something too familiar for her to lay her gaze upon. 

He was shocked; she looked so much different past the faint blur of swirling blots and off-white. She was real.

“Connie,” he whispered. He hadn’t realized he even said her name until her eyes widened then instantaneously shot to look at a place on the ground just beyond his hip. She shut them, choking back the threat of a sob, dropping her arms to her sides. 

It hurt when she looked away, as if someone had a wrench around his heart, tightening it with every second that passed. She was a good woman. The only one. He couldn’t lie to himself about that. It was impossible for him to lie. Even now, even as she had looked at him, he could not take back what he said to her. She was allowed to look at his face, recalling the fear he had that she would see him with the mask - his real face. The terms clashed in his mind for a few moments as her eyes returned to his. They were not hopeful, they carried no wish of a return to how life once was. He only sensed that she desired for him to say more, for something might be revealed tonight. 

Could he? Just for one night, would he allow Walter to take the reins? He hated seeing people in pain that was caused by another, hated seeing people neglected and abused by loved ones, by those they trusted. It was not right. Nothing could right something like that.

He did not want to be one of them.

She was searching, biting her lip because he knew she did not want to speak. It was his turn. He had said her name. Something must follow.

His real face still hung from her hand. He was scared to reach down for it. He had hoped she would offer it back to him but he felt she had forgotten she was even holding it.

“I - I need that back.”

She paused before attempting another smile. “Yeah. Here.” She thrust it out to him, rejecting it as if it were nothing more than a rag. She held his hat delicately under crossed arms, not so willing to give that back. He knew she had not liked his face when he brought it home that night in March. She had looked away; at the time, it hurt because he felt that she would be unable to love him if he wore it in front of her. He was always afraid that he would never hear those words from her lips again. He had needed them, _ thrived _on them, words and touches and soft smiles with cast-aside bright green eyes.

She was shivering, trembling perhaps, but never looked away from him.

What attracted her to him back then? Not her appearance. Others might find her attractive, but he was not one to notice women’s aesthetic beauty. He only told her she was beautiful out in the open because he came to understand that she _was_. More than the material used to make his face, the only other thing in this world he ever called ‘beautiful.’ He felt that the dress was meant for him. So was she. Her resilience and desire to know drove her to speak to him when no one else would. She invited him into her home, barely knowing anything about him and not afraid to discover things that would cause others to recoil in disgust. Her occupation encouraged her to help, to _teach_, even if he had given no evidence that he needed it. She was hesitant, delicate, treated him with a profound amount of respect. She saw what he did as acts of retribution, not as protecting her from harm. He always offered to walk her home; she never asked him to. She was completely capable of taking care of herself. But just in case, he was there to prevent more wrong-doings. She encouraged him, she was proud of him.

Walter gave her the bagel because when he sat with his half-a-dozen minus one, he would smile. He did not leave after the first time she kissed him because he came out of it unharmed; an extra beat in his heart was not arrhythmia. He planned the dinner so as to not feel fear in public with a woman that everyone knew was his date. He gave her the pin because it would be the only permanent aspect of him in her life. He initiated making love to her because he was comfortable, he was secure, he understood that she would be the only woman ever not to leave him. He told her he loved her because she deserved to hear it.

He missed those first few months.

With his mask off, Rorschach was - unwillingly - changing.

“I am sorry,” he said, enunciating every word.

She shook her head, visibly pained that he had said that. And then after a few more moments, she told him to close his eyes.

“Why?”

“Just do it. Just for a few seconds.”

What was she planning? Reluctantly, he agreed and closed them. Would she take his face away? He heard her shuffle, felt the fabric of their coats rub against each other. He tensed. He felt her close, so close, and then the lightest brush of her lips against his dry chapped mouth. A cut on his lower lip tingled with the brief contact.

She said, “I know kisses don’t heal everything. I don’t expect this one to. It’s just something selfish.”

She hadn’t moved back and the breath from her words spread across his face. He opened his eyes to meet hers, the color still faint and distant, faded from too much pain which he had left her.

Nothing could forgive him for that. She had come into his life and no amount of hatred towards women or desire to forget would ever erase everything she had done for him. He had not lost his memories. The journal in his pocket held an obscured account of shame and regret should anyone ever steal it. He would never write anything so personal which would force him to kill whoever touched the leather-bound book.

Rorschach had kept her as his exception and feared this day when they would see each other again. She had kept her distance from him, but why? If she had seen him during the day, why pass him and move on? It did not seem like her. He stepped back and asked her this. She did not appear phased by the change in their proximity to each other.

“I knew you had reasons and I wasn’t about to question them. I had resolved that if you wanted me to see you, to talk to you again, you would find me. You knew where I lived, where I worked…. You could have contacted me if you wanted to, but you didn’t. So I let you go on with your life.”

And she asked the question that he had feared. “Why didn’t you ever come in? You could have broken the window so easily.”

He didn’t want to answer. He was thankful that she offered a response herself.

“Don’t…,” she said. “Same reason you always gave. To protect me…. I wouldn’t have been afraid but I also never rose from bed, so I suppose I can just blame us both.”

She sniffed and offered back his hat. He was not ready to take it, though.

“I want you to come with me. It’s foolish of me to ask, really. Stupid. I don’t know. False hopes are really all I have. Fantasies.”

What power did she have that caused his heart to weaken so easily? The walls and barriers that were erected over the course of a single night were crumbling, but if they fell too far, he would be undone, and the world would not hold.

He tugged back on his face in a swift motion. She did not look away as he did so. She was silent as he snatched his hat from her hands and shoved it down atop his head.

“I always said I wasn’t afraid, can’t you see?” She smiled defensively as she spoke. He knew that if the smile faded from her reddening face, she would disintegrate into a shell of her former self.

He could not be a tool in another’s destruction, especially one who never knew harm.

“Don’t - ever stop smiling at me,” he heard himself say.

And then Rorschach did the unexpected. The brief re-emergence of Walter Kovacs twisted his mind and his thoughts and his self-control. This loss of self-control was the good kind that she had taught him. A deep kiss, as deep as he could manage through the thick fabric. He was blind to himself as his happened, numb as her hands found his arms and held so tight he might not be able to pry her away. His own gloved hands found her cheeks, brushing fingers across her lips as she struggled to lift up the mask a few inches to reveal a warm mouth, devoid and starved of a staple necessity he used to long for on nights out on the streets.

_ Weak. This is weakness. Have to stop. Must stop this. A trap. _

Leather brushed away hot tears that fell between their lips.

_ Not a trap. Exception. Exception to the rules. Not every other woman. Not a hating whoring mother. Not a loose streetwalking bitch. Felt something for her once. Again? Possible? _

He stopped her from removing his face a second time.

_ Am ashamed for what I did to her. Never deserved it. Strong, so strong. So constant, unwavering. Said so. Tried to tell me. _

He finally released her, breath shaky and he pulled back down his face to hide newly swollen lips.

“Can’t help me, Connie. Can’t heal this. Don’t try.”

Rorschach pressed his hat down again, shoved his hands in his pockets, and turned away, without daring to wait for her reaction.

_ No, no, no, weak, stupid, weak. That wasn’t me. Not me. Must save her from me. _

He managed several yards, leaving her in the darkness and lurking dangers. How long will she stay, hoping that he would stop and turn around? He must go, she must not follow him.

But he was secretly relieved when he heard heavy running footfalls behind him, yet hoping she would trail off when they were back on brightly lit city streets. She wouldn’t need him anymore once they were out of the darkness.

_ Shouldn’t have done that. No, she’ll want something, hope for change. No, no, she would leave if I told her to go. If I stopped right now, right here and told her to leave. She would not follow. _

He kept walking. Neither of them said a word to the other.

_ Don’t be stupid, Connie. _

She walked a few paces behind him; he didn’t know where he was going until they had gone many blocks and he halted, turning on his heel.

She stopped. “This is where I live. Am I inviting you in?” she asked.

His head snapped to the side. Her apartment was across the street.

“You’re not so lost to the world as you want the world to believe. I won’t help you. I won’t _heal _you. I can’t. I know. But I’ll be here. Always. So either leave me to walk across that street or come with me and keep your mask on. After this, I swear I won’t ever go out by myself at night anymore. Because I might see you again. And God knows what I would do if that happened.” 

She lingered for another moment, her ultimatum hung in the air like a pronounced death sentence at Sing Sing prison. She had been out in the cold for too long and her legs shook, her words had trembled as she spoke, but her eyes were waiting for his answer.

He had no answer. Beneath his real face, his eyes were shut and he concentrated on the feel of the fabric against his skin instead of the taste on his lips. His fists felt heavy in his pockets as he stood and waited. After a few moments, he heard her say “Goodbye” in a voice of pronounced surrender before the quick light clop of her heels faded up her apartment steps. He heard the slam of her door and he was able to open his eyes again to the world.

* * *

It was a full minute of complete silence as thoughts and memories and logic piled up in her head until she couldn’t carry them anymore. She wanted to cry but could only pant increasingly heavy breaths as if hyperventilating. And then she screamed, hoping that he heard her, before throwing her keys against the far wall. Her students used to have tantrums:

_'_ _ Do you think this would make you feel better?’ _

_ ‘ _ _ Yes.’ _

_ ‘Does it?’ _

_ ‘…No.’ _

She slid back against her front door, gripping her hair in tight clenched fists and sobbed ‘Why?’ over and over into her knees.

* * *

_ Bad choice. Bad choice, should have - should have gone with her. Should have stayed with her. A good woman, never hurt me, so why, how can I do this? _

He felt this was the best way to keep her safe. He was dangerous now and if she ever slipped up, if she ever said a harsh word to him again, if she ever questioned him again, he might do something horrible. Dan knew better but he was not a woman. Emotional creatures. The sudden scream that pierced the night hair proved this. But he had not moved, had not looked to his side at the dark building where she was now cursing him.

_ Won’t comfort her. Must go see. Go look. No harm in looking_.

Rorschach strode across the lanes of light traffic and darted into the alleyway, scaling the old brick wall to the fire escape and up to the second-story window.

Not there yet. But he heard her through the glass, her indistinguishable mutterings, curses, sighs … and then quiet. An hour of solid quiet as he hid out of view. He allowed another hour to pass, waiting. _ Should be somewhere else tonight. Not here. Weakness to come here. If Daniel asks, won’t say anything. _

He looked into her room. Darkness, her huddled form deep under the covers, closed eyes facing him. His shadow spilled across the floor, interrupting moonlight from casting itself over her face. He pressed a hand to the glass and noticed that it was unlocked. _ Never unlocked before. _

“Dammit,” he hissed, pushing up the pane and slid through one leg at a time, careful not to make a noise.

Months since he was last here. More memories he thought were gone replayed themselves.

_ ‘I don’t like promises. Never know what might happen.’ _ Walter had said that and Rorschach shot his eyes back out the window. He could run, it was never too late to run. But as he stood in her room and looked out at the falling snow, their footprints already covered up on the sidewalks, he reaffirmed a single unwavering belief.

_ There is good and there is evil. She is good. Always choose what is right. No matter the consequences. _

He took off his hat, placing it atop her dresser. 

He removed his shoes. He didn’t want to soil her carpet. 

His coat. It was warm in her home. 

His gloves which felt very sticky suddenly. 

He slipped off the purple pinstripe suit jacket which had gotten itchy and arranged the garments on the floor in a pile.

His face remained. Rorschach was hesitant to remove this new aspect of himself. Connie knew that Walter Kovacs would never return; only bits and pieces of his memories and personality remained, vying for attention and innocent care. Whenever he was alone and done for the night, Rorschach ripped off his face in disgust, preferring the rotting smell of his shitty apartment over the stench of his own breath. Over the past few months, the white had eagerly drunk its fill of blood and dirt, tarnished from abuse. 

He had not been furious when she removed it in the Park, only repelled at the sight of her slim fingers voluntarily dirtying themselves. 

_ This is brief. Do it, she already knows you. She’s the only one that knows both your faces. _

Two firm grips on the underside of his neck and he pulled the fabric off, tucking it in a pocket for safety.

_ There. Not so bad. _

Despite her eyes being tightly shut, she was still awake, waiting. She lay on her side and he approached from her back, hesitant. His fingers faltered, breath still as he maneuvered to lay beside her with the bedding separating their bodies. He had to remember how to do this, had to remember that this was okay.

She said nothing but indicated that he should be under with her by pushing the covers down her side. Rorschach was able to envelop her as Walter had after nights out - an arm under his head, another over her form. Sensory memories overwhelmed the depths of his thoughts as he breathed in the faint scent of her hair and her skin. _ Uncomfortable. _ He wanted to revolt, to remove himself _now _ from this woman, and jump back out the window from which he entered. _ And yet… _He forced himself to lie still, to remember everything, everything from before and their meeting in the Park just hours ago. Fear was trying to take hold of him, to tell him that he shouldn’t linger, doubts and questions from long long ago were resurfacing and his hand twitched in her grip.

She pressed his palm tight to her lips and he felt them tremble, felt her shutter slowly and irregularly against him until she was motionless long minutes later. And then _he _was still, quiet, in unabashed serenity. The simple feel of her form curled against his suppressed further turmoil and uncertainty. _ Strange, feels strange… but good. This … is not death, not evil, not destructive. _ She mouthed something against his skin but he didn’t know what. He could have asked her, could have heard her voice answer, could have revealed to her that this was _him _again, this was _him_, _ Walter_, he was here with her and if she would only turn to face him he would let her look at him and kiss him, but just briefly, just before he would realize that he was _ Rorschach_. Only here, only because of who they once were to each other was he able to change. Just for a few hours and he would disappear again before the sun rose. Only with her was Walter free again.

With every subsequent night, Rorschach calmed, slipping deeper into a state of neutrality. She said once not to do this for her benefit. “Please don’t do this just for me,” she whispered. But he was, he did it for them both. Even though he never recovered his love for her or a desire for physical intimacy again, he was closer to a state of _good _than what he experienced on the streets.

All he could do was lie with her. He would return in his blood-splattered face and clothes to hold onto her until she drifted off to the sound of his stifled breathing. Each time he cradled her tightly with silent fear of crushing her in his fitful sleep. He entered through her window once every couple months, and then once every few, and then only twice a year.

This was one promise that he could keep.

She held his pain temporarily through the night to return it upon his awakening. He entrusted her with his silence; no words were ever exchanged because her fantasies were dead. She rarely saw his eyes again and she never heard him speak. A kiss through his mask or on his sleeping face was all he received, a gift he carried always … even past her end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> minor edits throughout, punctuation and spelling, 8.26.20


End file.
